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TRUE SPIRITUALISM 



ALSO 



A CONTRADICTION OF THE WORK BY JOHN B< ROB- 
ERTS, ENTITLED " SPIRITUALISM : Or, BIBLE SAL- 
VATION VS. MODERN SPIRITUALISM." 



True Spiritualism and true Christianity are One in 
Foundation and Doctrine. 1 * 




''Man''* inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn.'" 



COPYRIGHTED 



Bj REV. R. SWINBURNE CLYMER 

AUTHOR OF 

;IANS, PHILOSOPHY OP FIRE, 
7INE ALCHEMY, etc. 

PRICE $2.00 

HICAL PUBLISHING COMPANY 

ALLENTOW2C, FA. 



■•"■ <^ x 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 
JAN 7 1907 

/k Copyright Entry 

CUSS A xXc, No. 




PREFACE 

In placing the following work before the 
public I have no excuse whatever to offer but it 
is important that I should make some explana- 
tions regarding certain portions thereof. 

The greater part of the work appeared as a 
serial in "Modern Miracle' ' published in New 
York City and was well received by a critical 
public. This being the case, I think that it will 
be fairly well received in its present form ex- 
cept by a certain class which class condemns lit- 
erature of this nature. 

The book is an answer or contradiction of 
the work by John E. Eoberts, a religious fanatie 
of the present century. A man who quotes oth- 
ers in part but does not give credit to such 
authors for fear that they, the readers, might 
read the books quoted from and thus learn for 
themselves. I am radical in this perhaps but it 
is a fact nevertheless. 

What is said concernng Marriage is very 
radical but it must be remembered that in order 



4 PREFACE. 

to set any reform in motion it is necessary to 
draw distinctive lines so that he who reads 
may understand. I do not think it would be 
wise to overthrow the marriage institution. In 
fact, anarchy would set in but there is certainly 
a vast field here for reform. I do believe that 
the child, no matter under what conditions born, 
should be recognized as legal by the state and 
crimes of such nature will never stop until the 
state does recognize such children. God does 
not care how a child is born so long as it is 
brought up right and that class of children 
known as bastards will never be brought up 
right unless they are recognized as legal chil- 
dren and given the name of the right father, 
no matter what the condition under which he 
or she was conceived. Can the unborn child help 
it if the conditions under which it was created 
were not such as are sanctioned by Church or 
Society? Never. Then why should it be con- 
demned? God does not and while man tries to 
condemn he should himself be condemned for so 
doing. I boldly claim that the child is legal and 
legitimate no matter under what circumstances 
born. 

The marriage ceremony as at the present 
day performed has no foundation in the Bible 



PREFACE 5 

or Holy Scripture. It was never instituted by 
God but by man as are all other man-made insti- 
tutions. That it serves a purpose I do not deny. 
In fact, I know that it does but there are other 
legal marriages besides those performed by 
priests. As before stated, it would be a very 
bad thing to sweep all marriage laws aside but 
the law should be such as to recognize the true 
marriage which takes place when the man mis- 
leads the woman. If the state and Church would 
recognize the true marriage, thousands of pres- 
ent-day crimes would cease. I do not think that 
the reader can misunderstand me in the present 
work after this explanation. 

Now a word concerning the phrase "Priest- 
craft." By this word I do not mean only the 
priests of the Catholic Church but I use the 
word to cover all men at the head of churches, 
no matter what denomination it may be. I do 
not want the reader to understand that I con- 
demn all priests, all ministers. I do not for 
many of my best friends are Ministers of the 
Gospel, priests of the Catholic Church. I want 
it understood that I mean only such as think 
they know it all and will not study, nor investi- 
gate anything outside of their particular creed. 
In fact, I refer to the bigot, no matter what the 



6 PREFACE 

name of the denomination to which he belongs. 
This is the sense in which I use the word 
"priests" or " priestcraft. ' ' 

Concerning the condemnation of Churchan- 
ity and the Church, I want my readers to under- 
stand that / do not condemn Christianity. I 
believe that religion taught by the Christ to 
be the purest and most sublime religion ever 
given to man, but at the same time, I positively 
want my readers to understand that these teach- 
ings of the Christ are exactly the same as those 
taught by Esoteric Spiritualism, Occultism and 
Mysticism. There is absolutely no difference. 
The Church as a whole has lost the inner or 
esoteric meaning of the religion they try to 
teach. In fact, the husk only remains. When 
I say "Churchanity" or condemn modern 
Christianity I do not mean the true Chris- 
tianity but only that which passes for the trite 
Christianity. Thousands upon thousands of 
ministers and priests are trying to teach the 
Truth as they see it and such men are doing 
good. They are trying to teach a more beau- 
tiful doctrine. In many cases, their members 
are not ready for a beautiful religion, one of 
Love and good will to all men. 

Occultism, Mysticism and Spiritualism are 



PREFACE 7 

judged by the masses according to the advertise- 
ments appearing in magazines, journals and 
newspapers. No wonder that the people con- 
demn these noble sciences. I think that I should 
do the same if I did not have any further knowl- 
edge of the subject. There is no doubt but that 
more fraud takes place under the name of these 
sciences than under all else. However, this does 
not prove that these Sciences in themselves are 
a fraud, but it does prove that they are mighty 
sciences or else they would not he counterfeited 
as they are. There is no condemnation too 
severe for those who use these things to defraud 
a people who are truly seeking the Light as 
many thousands are at this present day. Fraud 
of this nature should be condemned as severely 
as is abortion. Newspapers throughout the 
country condemn Occultism and other sciences 
of this nature and— accept all advertisements, 
no matter how condemnable on the face of 
them, concerning these things. Who then is the 
one to be condemned! 

Throughout the work mention is made that 
the Church upholds the infernal crime of Vac- 
cination. This hardly holds good at the present 
time for in a canvas made through the state of 
Pennsylvania by the Reformer— Mrs. Lola Lit- 



8 PKEPACE 

tie, of Minneapolis, it was found that the min- 
isters of the Methodist Church as a whole con- 
demned this foul practice of child poisoning. It 
will thus be seen that the Church is awakening 
to facts which no longer will be denied. 

There is another point that I wish my read- 
ers to bear in mind and one which they possibly 
do not accept as a truth. I am not a Spiritual- 
ist in the accepted term. I belong to that Secret 
School which contains all these sciences within 
its catalog. My only reason for the present 
work is my desire for fair-play for all things, 
Spiritualism, as understood by the majority of 
Spiritualists .even, is but a branch of the great 
tree, of that great school to which I make claim 
of belonging. When I use the word ' ' Spiritual- 
ism' ' I mean what might be termed Spirituality 
and no matter whether you are a Methodist or 
a Catholic, you can still be a true Spiritual- 
ist. It is not even necessary to believe in me- 
diumship as generally understood in order to 
be a Spiritualist. "Christianity and Spiritual- 
ism are one, for Spirtualism is the foundation 
of Christianity and is the foundation of the 
coming Universal Brotherhood of Man." I 
hope that I may no longer be misunderstood and 
that all will read the book and understand it as 
I wish them to understand it. 



PREFACE 9 

Quotations throughout the work are from 
such well-known writers as: Peebles, Foster, 
Randolph, Hull, Dowd and Beard. I have tried 
to be absolutely fair in all things and if I have 
not been, then I pray you forgive me, for the 
desire was to be fair and honest. 

The Author* 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

Mr. Roberts starts by telling us that : i ' Spir- 
itualists say that 'the Spiritualism of the pres* 
ent day is that which Jesus preached nineteen 
centuries ago.' But we can prove by the very 
teachings and utterances of Spiritualists, that 
the difference between Christianity, as taught 
in God's word, and modern Spiritualism, is as 
wide as the gulf separating Lazarus from the 
rich man. ' ' 

This statement, so far as I have investigated 
the subject, is utterly untrue. It is a fact, on& 
that cannot be denied, that the way some au- 
thors treat Spiritualism in their writings, this 
would seem to be correct, as there is a work 
now before me, written by one who claims not 
only to be a Spiritualist, but an authority, which 
is as utterly false to the true teachngs of both 
Spiritualism and esoteric Christianity, as that 
modern Churchism is Christianity. Modem 
Christianity, which is in reality nothing but 
Creed and Churchism, must not be taken as the 



12 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

esoteric Christianity. To do so is unfair and 
without reason or common sense. Nor yet must, 
the Bible be taken in its literal sense, as it was 
so distorted at the time of Constantine that it. is 
almost mpossible to find the wheat among the 
chaff. 

Dr. J. M. Peebles, is possibly one of the 
greatest authorities on the subject, as he is fair 
to both Spiritualism and esoteric Christianity 
and I shall quote him as to what Spiritualism is. 
"Spiritualism is the philosophy of life— and 
the direct antithesis of materialism. If the illua- 
irious Tyndall saw the "potency and prom- 
ise' J of all life in matter, Spiritualists, with 
all rationalistic idealists, see the potency and 
promise of all life and evolutionary unf oldment 
in Spirit, which Spirit permeates and energizes 
the matter of all the subordinate kingdoms, 
mineral, vegetable, and animal 

Thinking— meditating, Columbus concluded 
that if there was a * ' this-side, ' ' there must nec- 
essarily be a "that side" to the world. And so 
'sailing on and still onward toward the western 
sunset under the inspiration of a lofty faith, he 
•discovered the new world, and, like a flash, faith 
'became fruition. 
* ' And so students of the occult; Spiritualists 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 13 

of the last century, meditating— investigating, 
discovered, or rather, rediscovered the spirit 
world— the Spiritualism of the elder ages. In- 
tuition and the Soul's higher senses, with the 
out-reaching ideal, are ever prophesying of the 
incoming ideal. The to-day's, afire with life 
and love, assures us of a coming to-morrow. 
This world indicates another— a future world, 
which Spiritualists have not only rediscovered, 
but have quite fully described. 

Spiritualism does not create truth, but is a 
living witness to the truth of a future existence. 
It reveals it — demonstrates it, describing its in- 
habitants—their occupations and characteristics. 

Hannibal crossed the Alps twenty centuries 
before Napoleon did. Napoleon reasoned that 
what man had done, man could do, and so with 
flags and banners unfurled he led the conquer- 
ing French over the snow-capped Alps. And 
through all the centuries before and since Han- 
nibal's time, through all the historic ages there 
were rifts in the clouds— there were visions and 
voices from the better land of immortality. In- 
spired mystics and philosophers testified alike 
to the Reality of apparitions, the appearance of 
good angels and the fulfilment of dreams. An 
Angel— a spiritual being— appeared to Joseph 



14 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

in a dream announcing the coming of Jesus. 

Patriarchs, prophets, and seers in Abra- 
ham's and Isaiah's time conversed with spirits 
and angels according to the Scriptures. Apos- 
tles, disciples, and the early Christians before 
and after John and Paul's time, consciously 
communed with the spirits of those they had 
known on earth— and why should not we? 
Neither God nor His laws have changed. The 
reputed wise man Solomon, said: "The thing 
that had been, is that which shall be, and that 
which is done is that which shall be done,— and 
whatsoever God doeth it shall be forever." 
(Eccl. 3:14.) 

If there were visions, trances, apparitions, 
Spiritual gifts, and conscious spirt communica- 
tions all through the past ages— why not now? 
Have the heavens over us become brass? and 
have angel iongues become palsied! These 
things did happen in the past— and they occur 
to-day. And few, if any, except the most illit- 
erate—except the atheist, the imprudent bigot 
and the ironclad, creed-bound sectarists deny it. 
Spiritualism is the most unpopular among the / 
ignorant. It is also very unpopular in sectarian 
club rooms, idiotic infirmaries, and state pen- 
itentiaries. — — 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 15 

When that highly inspired man of Nazareth 
preached fyis radical doctrines in Palestine, and 
performed his astonishing mediumistic works, 
crowds following him, some of the doubting cau- 
tions conservatives of those times asked the 
question: "Have any of the Rulers of the Phari- 
sees believed on him?" That is to say, have 
any of the reputed great and wise, believed on 
him? If so, we, the driftwood—we the putty- 
headed policy men— will fall in line. Human 
nature is the same in all ages, and cowards are 
ever the same shrinking, apologizing, oily ton- 
gued moral cowards. 

SPIRITUALISM IS NOT SPIRITISM 

Spiritualism must be differentiated from 
Spiritism. The terminology of the two words 
absolutely necessitate, as every scholar knows, 
entirely different meanings. Chinese, Indians, 
and Utah Mormons are Spiritists, believing in 
present spirit communications. Most of the Af- 
rican tribes of the Dark Continent worship 
demons and believe in spirit converse, but cer- 
tainly they are not intelligent, religious Spirit- 
ualists. 

Spiritism is a science— a fact— a sort of 
Modernized Babylonian necromancy. The baser 
portion of its devotees, hypnotized by the unem- 



16 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

bodied denizens of hades, divine for dollars. It 
is promiscuous spirit commerce with a high 
tariff. It is from the lower spheres, and mor- 
ally gravitates toward the dark. It has its leg- 
erdemain, its tricksters, frauds, and traveling 
tramps. They should be exposed and shunned 
as you would shun dens of adders. Spiritism, 
I repeat, is a fact; so is geology, so is mesmer- 
ism, so is telepathy, and so, also, is a rattle- 
snake's bite. Facts may be morally true or 
false. They may serve for purposes of good or 
direst ill. As an exhibition of wonders— as pabu- 
lum for sceptical atheists, who demand visible 
sight of the invisible infinite One, and in^ 
sist upon a terrific clap of thunder to convince 
them of the existence of electricity, commercial 
spiritism with its seeking for gold-fields, and 
hunting for "social affinities,' ' with its attend- 
ing, shadowy hosts, manifesting in ill-ventilated 
seance rooms, may be a temporary necessity to 
a degree useful, but it legitimately belongs, 
with such kindred subjects as mesmerism, to 
the category of the sciences." 

We need not go to Africa or the Dark Con- 
tinents, to find these Spiritists, as we can find 
them right here in America, and possibly more 
of this class can be found than of those that 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 17 

follow genuine Spiritualism as an Esoteric 
religion. It is this class of Pseudo-spiritualists 
that bring the deadly and foul odium upon that 
whch is the true Spiritualism, and it is this 
class of frauds, that Churchism and Priestcraft 
take as their authority when speaking of Spirit- 
ualism. It is a fact, beyond dispute, that ninety- 
nine out of every hundred of those who write 
against Spiritualism, do not know the differ- 
ence between Spiritualism and Spiritism. They 
do not want to know. They do know that 
there is no Christ Principle' in Churchism, no 
life, no salvaton, no regeneration, nor anything 
else that will appeal to any one who desires food 
for the Soul. Knowing this, they know that 
they can hold no one to them except those en- 
tirely ignorant of anything pertaining to the 
Soul or the Higher life, and such as do not have 
brains enough to think for themselves. This 
being a fact, they can plainly see that those who 
study the subject, will leave Churchism and join 
Spiritualism. Were they to take a few authori- 
ties such as Peebles on Spiritualism, Dowd on 
Regeneration and Immortality, and others on 
kindred subjects, they might find the truth, and 
know what belonged to Spiritualism, and the 
Higher Sciences, Mysticism, Occultism, etc., but 



18 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

they will not do it, as they would be unable to 
base an argument on and against these things 
if they knew the truth. If they read the works 
of Spiritists, they can find all the dark and 
devilish isms that they want and it is then that 
they hold forth against the true religions, while 
only understanding that which may possibly 
bear the same, or nearly the same name, but 
which is as far from being true Spiritualism or 
Mysticism as is Black Magic from White Magic. 

Dr. Peebles further says : * * But Spiritualism, 
originating in God who is Spirit, and grounded 
in Man's moral nature, is a substantial fact, and 
infinitely more— a fact plus, reason and con- 
science—a fact relating to moral and religious 
culture— a sublime spiritual truth ultimating in 
consecration to the good, the beautiful and the 
heavenly. 

Spiritualism— a grand, moral science, and 
a wisdom religion— proffers ,the key that un- 
locks the mysteries of the ages. It constituted 
the foundation stones of all the ancient faiths. 
It was the vitalizing soul of all past religions. 
It was the mighty uplifting force that gave to 
the world in all ages its inspired teachers and 
immortal leaders. 

Rightly translated, the direct words of Jesus 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 19 

are (John 4:24) "Spirit is God." The spirit- 
ual is the real and the substantial. The spirit- 
ually minded are reverential. They are religi- 
ous. Their life is a prayer. "The fruit of 
the Spirit," said the apostle to the Gentiles, "is 
love, joy, peace, long-surf ering, gentleness, 
goodness, faith, meekness, temperance." Spir- 
itualism, by ivhatever name knoivn, without the 
fruit of the Spirit, without religion and moral 
growth, is but the veriest rust and rubbish; and 
religion, by ivhatever name known, in any age, 
without Spiritualism and its accompanying 
Spiritual gifts, is only an empty shell — an 
offensive creedal cadaver, that should be buried 
without ecclesiastical formalities. 

Spirit is God. And, Spiritualism while in- 
hering in and originating from God, does not 
center alone therein, nor rest entirely upon phe- 
nomena, but upon spirit— upon the spiritual 
and moral constitution of man, which constitu- 
tion requires such spiritual sustenance as in- 
spiration, prayer, vision, trance, clairvoyance, 
and heavenly impressions from the divine 
sphere of love and wisdom. Spiritualists, like 
the primitive Christians, believe in God the 
Father and in the Brotherhood of the races: 
They acknowledge the living Christ; they feel 



20 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

the influx of the Holy Spirit ; they converse with 
angels; they cultivate the religious emotions; 
they open, their seances, many of them, with 
prayer. They are "richly blessed with visions 
and calm, uplifting ministrations from angelic 
homes. They see in every pure crystal stream 
a Jordan, in every verdure-clad mountain a 
present Olivet, and in every well-cultivated 
prairie a Canaan flowing with the milk and 
honey of spiritual truth— love to God and love 
to man. 

Spiritualism teaches salvation by character ; 
or by the life, as did Paul in his higher inspired 
moments, who said— " Being reconciled, we 
shall be saved by life. ' ' (Romans 5:10.) 

Spirit is God. And neither matter nor sea- 
slime nor protoplasm constitutes the basis of 
conscious life, but spirit— that is to say, spirit- 
ual or divine substance. Spirituality is the sub- 
stantial reality. And man is a spirit now— a 
spirit living in a material body, which body 
bears something of the same relation to the real, 
conscious, invisible man, that the husk bears to 
the corn,— chaff to the wheat.' ' 

Do Spiritualists believe in the Bible? Yes, 
and No. All men who have studied the Bible, 
and have developed the " Inner" being, know 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 21 

that the teachings of the Bible cannot, as a rule, 
be believed in their literal sense. The spirit of 
these teachings is grand and snblime and is 
identical with that of the teachings of the true 
Spiritualism. But these teachings must be read 
i ' between the lines " as it were, and the esoteric 
meaning understood. That there was a general 
belief in Spirits at the time when the Bible was 
written is a fact beyond dispute, and we turn 
to the speech made by Thomas Gales Foster, in 
Boston, in 1867, in which he said: "Now, let us 
begin, my friends, with the first book, the very 
first book of the Bible. And here, perhaps, 
men, just as is claimed they have appeared to 
the mediums of Boston and other places, in the 
present day. And the objector upon Biblical 
grounds will have to settle the difficulty with 
himself as to whether or not there is any reli- 
ance to be had in such manifestations. 

In the nineteenth chapter of Genesis, two 
angels in the form of men appeared to Lot in 
the gate of Sodom, and through the warning 
which these angels give him, his family and 
himself are enabled to escape from impending 
evil. Now, my friends, it would be well if the 
warnings that are given through modern 
media— if the warnings that are given by the 

2 I 



22 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

spirits in modern times— were always attended 
to. Perhaps it would have been well for our 
nation (time alone must determine) if the true 
and pure-hearted Lincoln had listened to the 
manifestations and the warnings that were 
given him through a medium in our National 
Capitol; he would not so soon have stepped 
from the topmost round of the ladder of fame 
into the sky, but would have remained to carry 
out his own ideas in regard to the perpetuity of 
American Institutions. 

In the twenty-first chapter of Genesis, an 
angel again appears to Hagar, and prophesies 
in behalf of the boy Ishmael, and comf orteth the 
mother. In the twenty-second chapter of Gene- 
sis, the arm of Abraham is arrested when he is 
about to commit murder upon the body of his 
son Isaac, having been tempted to do so by 
what, to-day, would be called an undeveloped 
spirit, under the supposition that God had so or- 
dered him, by way of a temptation. 

In the twenty-eighth chapter of Genesis, 
Jacob is represented as having had a dream, 
wherein he saw a ladder extending from earth 
to heaven, up and down which angels of God 
were ascending and descending. Modern Spir- 
itualism, by its various phenomena, is proving 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 23 

that such a ladder exists— is proving that there 
is an intellectual, spiritual ladder, reaching 
from earth to heaven, "bright with beckoning 
angels. " You believe in the dream of Jacobs 
and scoff at the declarations of to-day. 

In the thirtieth and thirty-first chapters of 
Genesis, Jacob is represented as having had 
another dream, in which he receives the advice, 
which results in the curious proceedings, to say 
the least, by means of which the property of his 
uncle, Laban, is transferred to himself. Dur- 
ing this interview with the angels in his dream, 
he was also advised to leave his uncle Laban. 
In the thirty-second chapter, after he had left 
his uncle Laban, the angels of God met him, 
and when Jacob saw them, he said, "This is 
God's host." And when Jacob was left alone, 
there wrestled a man with him until the break- 
ing of day. Now, this all seemed extremely ab- 
surd to the Spiritualist before the manifesta- 
tions of modern Spiritualism; but correspond- 
ing manifestations have occurred in different 
parts of the country, where there has been act- 
ual physical force manifested in contests with 
media by an unseen power. Consequently, the 
Spiritualists believe in this manifestation of 
the past, far more than those do who deny the 



24 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

existence of conscious individuality beyond the 
grave. 

Again, one of the allegations brought against 
modern Spiritualism, and heralded forth by 
the many-mouthed press, and by the pulpit, is 
this: that the tendency of modern Spiritualism 
is evil; that the inculcations which come from 
the spirit-world, through the modern media, are 
calculated to demoralize societv. Now, mv 
friends, without stopping to argue the question 
whether in the past or in the present they were 
or are immoral, let us see whether the analogy 
does not hold good even in this respect. In 
the third chapter of Exodus, whilst Moses was 
watching the flocks of his father-in-law, Jethro, 
an angel of God appeared to Moses, and ap- 
pointed him to take the captaincy of the Israel- 
itish host in their contemplated exodus from 
Egypt. During the conversation held with 
Moses, the angel gave Moses the advice that the 
Israelite sh women should fradulently possess 
themselves of the jewels and the raiment of the 
Egyptian women— steal them. Did ever any 
other spirits that are controlling the media in 
different parts of the country, giving such ad- 
vice? Yet the spirits controlling to-day are im- 
moral ; and the spirits of former times should be 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 25 

listened to— according to the Biblical objector. 
In the fourteenth chapter of Exodus, an angel 
preceded the host of Israel in the final exodus. 
In the twenty-second chapter of Numbers, an 
angel met Balaam by the way, as he was pro- 
ceeding to the camp of the Moabites, whose 
ruler invited him to come in order that he might 
curse the Israelites, whose encroachments he 
had begun to fear. In the second chapter of 
Judges, it is stated that an angel spoke to aJl 
the people at Bochim. 

In the sixth chapter of Judges, a manifesta- 
tion occurs, wherein the party concerned gave 
indications of precisely just such conditions as 
too often prevail to-day among some Spiritual- 
ists, and among many investigators— that is— 
a disposition to doubt perpetually, and to re- 
quire conviction every morning; forgetting the 
test that has but recently been given, and mani- 
festing an earnest desire for a continual repe- 
tition, for the production of a similar one." 

In the sixth chapter of Judges, at the time 
that Israel was oppressed by Midi an, an angel 
of the Lord, it is stated, appeared to Gideon, 
and appointed him to take command of the Is- 
raelitish host against the Midianites. Gideon 
was one of the doubting Spiritualists. He 



28 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

doubted whether it was an angel who appeared 
to him in the form of a man, and he asked him 
for a test. The test was this : that he might be 
allowed to place a fleece of wool on the ground, 
and that the angel should so manifest that the 
fleece of wool during the night should become 
wet whilst the ground remained dry. The angel 
did this, and so effectually, that a bowl of water 
was wrung from the fleece of wool. Now Gid- 
eon was not satisfied with this, but he said, 
"Will the Lord permit me, that I again place 
the fleece of wool, and let the fleece of wool 
remain dry and the ground become wet! " and 
the angel did that also. Still Gideon was not 
satisfied, nor was he convinced, until, in the 
seventh chapter, he received another manifesta- 
tion—that of the tumbling of a cake of barley 
bread into the Midianitish camp. All I can say 
in regard to this is, that when you next visit 
-a medium, I trust you may meet with a spirit 
as complaisant as the one who met Gideon. 
In the thirteenth chapter of Judges, an angel 
appeared to the wife of Manoah. Now the wife 
of Manoah was barren, and the angel promised 
her the birth of a child. He afterwards ap- 
peared to Manoah and his wife together in the 
form of a man, and they both conversed with 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 27 

this man, nor did they know he was an angel or 
a spirit until he disappeared in the flame of 
their own burnt-offering. In the fifth chapter 
of Joshua, it is stated, that as Joshna ap- 
proached the walls of Jericho, he saw a man 
standing by the wall with a drawn sword. He 
advanced to him, and demanded of him on 
which side he fought. The Book, which you call 
infallible, says that the angel replied that he ap- 
peared there as the captain of the Lord's hosts, 
and that he fought upon the side of Joshua. In 
the nineteenth chapter of first Kings, it is re- 
corded that an angel appeared to Elijah more 
than once while he was fleeing from the anger 
of Jezebel to Mount Horeb, and that Elijah was 
fed by the angel with material food. 

Again, it is said that spirits, through mod- 
ern media, are disposed to falsify ; that they tell 
falsehoods; in other words, that they tell lies. 
Even admitting for a moment that this is true, 
let us see if the analogy will not hold good still. 
Jn the twenty-second chapter of I Kings, it 
is stated that God himself put a lying spirit into 
the mouths of the prophets of Ahab, in order 
that he might be deceived. With what bad 
grace, therefore, comes the charge in the pres- 
ent day, by Biblical objectors, against modern 



28 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

media, and the spirits controlling them, with 
respect to falsehood. 

In the sixth chapter of II Kings occurs this 
manifestation: Elisha, by the power that was 
manifesting itself through him, caused a solid 
iron axe to swim upon the surface of the River 
Jordan. Again, in the twenty-first chapter of I 
Chronicles you will recollect it is stated that 
David had angered God by numbering the peo- 
ple, and that God gave David the choice of three 
modes of punishment. Now, mark you, David 
was a man after God's own heart, and his means 
of communication with God were through the 
agency of Gad, the seer. Compare the mani- 
festations of Gad, the seer, with the manifesta- 
tions of Andrew Jackson Davis, the seer, Pas- 
chal Beverly Randolph, and others, and answer 
to yourself, and to the spirit of the age, whether 
or not there is not as much rationality and 
beauty in the manifestations of seers of modern 
times as in any of those presented in the past. 

In the twenty-first chapter of II Chronicles 
is a remarkable verse. It is there stated that a 
handwriting came from Elijah, the prophet, to 
Jehoram, King of Judah; whilst the Biblical 
chronology shows that Elijah had gone to 
heaven, in a chariot of fire, thirteen years prior 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 29 

to the date of the writing. What reference can 
this verse possibly have, if not corresponding 
with conditions in the present day. 

In the sixty-ninth Psalm there is another re- 
markable verse. It is the twenty-second verse. 
Read it, and remember it. David is represented 
as uttering a prayer, in which he makes use of 
this exclamation: "Let their tables become a 
snare before them ; and that which should have 
been for their welfare, let it become a trap." 
It is difficult to tell what allusion this has, but if 
it does have an allusion to the corresponding 
conditions of modern manifestations, then only 
the experienced investigator in modern Spirit- 
ualism can appreciate the deep malignity of any 
man's heart who could utter such a prayer. 

In the first, second and third chapter of 
Ezekiel you have an account of a vision pre- 
sented to Ezekiel, and of his interview with the 
spirits; and in the course of these interviews 
Ezekiel says, distinctly, "A spirit entered into 
me, and enabled me to hear the voices from the 
sky,"— precisely what is claimed by the major- 
ity of the trance mediums of modern times. And 
I ask you to compare the manifestations of the 
book of Ezekiel with the manifestations of mod- 
ern times through different media, and see 



80 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

'which has the advantage in morality and de- 
cency. In the third chapter of Daniel yon will 
remember that three men, Shadrach, Meshach 
and Abednego, by the presence of the angel and 
by the influence of that presence, were saved 
from injury by the devouring elements. 

In the sixth chapter of Daniel a manifesta- 
tion occurs illustrative of that wonderful mag- 
netic power that can be brought to bear through 
the human organism; indicative of that fact, 
that when you shall have properly understood 
the laws of your being, and more fully compre- 
hend the occult forces of Nature, you will find 
that men and women, the entire human family, 
stands upon the apex of creation, and must, of 
necessity, control all things below. In the tenth 
chapter of Daniel, after Daniel had fasted, as 
is the custom with modern mediums on all 
proper occasions, he was entranced, and a 
vision was presented to him; and, during the 
vision, the spirit approached him in the form of 
a man, and spoke to him, and touched him— 
precisely what, is occurring daily throughout the 
country. People believe in the former; and 
condemn the latter. In the ninth chapter of 
Nehemiah it is said, all the people praised God. 
Because of what? He had sent them a good 
spirit to speak to them. 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 31 

Read the twenty-eighth chapter of I Samuel, 
from the first to nineteenth verse, inclusive. 
You have all heard of the witch of Endor. The 
Bible does not call her a witch; it is only the 
clergy who denominate her thus. She is not 
called a witch except in the headings of the 
chapter and page, which have been furnished 
by the translators. The chapter itself, from 
the beginning to the end, does not contain the 
word ivitch. She is called the woman of 
Endor. She was a very good, hospitable woman 
likewise. When Saul went there, she set before 
him the best she had, although quite poor in 
this world's goods. She gave them a sitting, 
as it is called in modern times, with a striking 
manifestation. She proved herself a good 
woman, and a noble, true-hearted, God-gifted 
medium. They are called witches by some, 
and a hundred or so years ago they were called 
Witches and some were burned, or lynched, or 
suffered other physical punishment or death at 
the hands of the ignorant and narrow-brained 
masses. 

In the thirty-second chapter of Job, eighth 
verse, one of the advisers of Job utters a decla- 
ration, which we commend to those of the read- 
ers who believe in the infallibility of the Bible. 



32 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

Elihu, the youngest adviser of Job, proposes to 
speak before two elder advisers, and he offers 
an apology to Job. if we may so term it, in this 
language: "But there is a spirit in man: and 
the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them un- 
derstanding. ' ' Just the apology, if it be one, 
that all the media of the land would offer to the 
learned wisdom of the age. We would not as 
sume to arrogate to ourselves a superabund- 
ance of wisdom; but whilst we are aiming to 
teach, we beg to remember "there is a spirit 
in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty 
giveth him understanding. ' ' In the thirty- third 
chapter of the same book, "God speaketh once, 
yea, twice, yet man perceiveth it not. In a 
dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep 
falleth upon men, in slumbering upon the bed; 
then he openeth the ears of men, and sealeth 
their instruction. ' ' Every word of which the 
Mystics, Occultists and Spiritualists of this, and 
past ages, believed. 

We turn over a number of leaves, and come 
to the first chapter of the book of Matthew. 
There we find that an angel appeared to Joseph 
in a dream, and explained to him the condition 
of Mary. You believe that. Suppose an angel 
was to appear to-day and attempt to explain 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 33 

away such a condition in some of the mediums 
or Mystics of modern times. The world and 
church would reject such a declaration as 
wholly absurd, but they accept the manifesta- 
tion of two thousand years ago. 

In the first chapter and first verse of that 
wonderful book, the Apocalypse, it is stated that 
information is about to be given by an angel. 
And in the last chapter, after John, in the isle 
of Patmos, had received the mysteries of the 
book of Revelation, the angel, through whom 
they had been received, approached him. John, 
psychologized by the idea of the age, when he 
perceived the brilliant beauty of the angel, sup- 
posed God himself was before him, and "fell 
down to worship before the feet of the angel 
which showed him these things. f ' But the angel 
said, "See thou do it not; for I am thy fellow- 
servant, and of thy brethren the prophets. 
Worship God." Precisely what the spirits, 
through the various phenomena of modern 
Spiritualism, are saying to-day. The spirits 
who communicate to-day, as in the past, are but 
your brethren, members of the same great hu- 
man family. Our injunction likewise is, Wor- 
ship God. But our desire is, also, that you will 
listen to the advice of those who have journeyed 



34 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

across the silent river before you, whose affec- 
tions are still warm toward yon, and who seek 
to pilot yon securely to the bright and beauti- 
ful shores of another and a better land. 

I have given but a few of these manifesta- 
tions, in order to show the analogy existing be- 
tween those of ancient days and those of mod- 
ern times, and also to represent how utterly 
absurd it is, upon Biblical grounds, to object 
to the phenomenal phases of modern Spiritual- 
ism. The hypothesis assumed is this,— and I 
beg of those of you who object, upon Biblical 
grounds, to the phenomena, to take home the 
declaration,— the hypothesis of the spiritual 
school, summed up, is this : If in the past there 
was a laiv existing in the divine economy by 
means of which Moses and Elias could have con- 
versed with Jesus, by means of which angels in 
the form of men could converse with Abraham, 
or appear amid any of the conditions to which I 
have adverted— if there was a law by which one 
of his fellow -servants could appear to John on 
the isle of Patmos—then, if God be eternal and 
his laivs unalterable, that laic must still be in 
existence; and you and, I can commune with our 
fellow -servants who have gone before us; we, 
too, can commune with angels proportionately 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 35 

to the conditions and circumstances by which we 
may be surrounded. And I aver that this is a 
logical conclusion, a legitimate deduction, from 
whence there is no escape. 

Victorien Sardou, the great dramatist, par 
excellence, of France, when questioned as to 
the source of his extraordinarily proline 
graphic power, invariably referred it to the in- 
visible and spiritual world, and boldly claimed 
to receive matter and suggestions for literary 
labor direct from that sublime and elevated 
source; nor can there be a rational doubt but 
that in these days, when men, women and chil- 
dren, the wide world over, are being bathed, as 
it were, in the effluent tides of spirit from the 
worlds above us; and in which magnetic sus- 
ceptibility is as common as the tendency toward 
music. It is fast being granted, on all sides, 
that even clairvoyance, which a few brief years 
ago, within the recollection of the most of us 
now living, was laughed and sneered at by five- 
sixths of the world, is, after all, not merely a 
solid human fact, more valuable, perhaps, to 
the human race, than any other single one in its 
history of possessions, is now conceded not to 
be a special gift to a few favored individuals 
but to be the property and heritage of the entire 



36 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

human family, latent in all, developed in a few, 
but, by judicious effort, attainable by nearly all : 
Clairvoyance is a royal road to knowledge; by 
it tens of thousands have been instructed, and 
by it alone Dr. P. B. Randolph received the 
education that enabled him to give to the world 
the literary gems that he put forth. 

What is Spiritualism? To show what Spir- 
itualism is, Mr. Roberts quotes the following 
from a speech made by Dr. P. B. Randolph, in 
1858: "Spiritualism is all eye and head, no soul 
and heart; all intellect, no emotion; all philos- 
ophy, no religion; all spirit, no God. The anti- 
Bible, anti-God, anti-Christian Spiritualism, I. 
have perfectly demonstrated to be subversive, 
unrighteous, destructive, disorderly, and irre- 
ligious: consequently to be shunned by every 
true follower of God and holiness, etc." 

Dr. Randolph does not say that the true 
Spiritualism is this, but he does say, that the 
anti-Bible, anti-God and anti-Christian Spirit- 
ualism is this. Every true Spiritualist will ad- 
mit this to be true, as we all know that the 
counterfeit of Spiritualism is as bad as the true 
Spiritualism is good. But this is not Spiritual- 
ism, it is Spiritism. This is a word that was 
unknown at the time that Dr. Randolph made 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 37 

tliis speech, and lie had to draw a distinction 
between the good and the bad. Spiritism bears 
the identical relation to Spiritualism, as modern 
Christianity, or Churehanity, bears to the true 
Christianity. The one is scientific and hard- 
hearted, foul, lustly, abortive, and all that is bad, 
while the other is pure, lofty, uplifting, and all 
that is good. 

"Whoever has read the speech, knows that 
Dr. Randolph does not refer to the true Spirit- 
ualism when he denounces scientific Spiritual- 
ism, and I will prove that this is true, ere my 
task is finished. This speech was used in his 
work, "Soul, the Soul World," which was is- 
sued in 1872, and following the speech, he say3 : 
"I have nothing to change or modify in the 
above sermon except that my experience since 
1858 has satisfied me that most of what I then 
called Demonism, meaning devils working on 
a person from the outside, was, and is, nothing 
more nor less than the devil from within— in 
other words, unmitigated devilishness, wherein 
disembodied people, good, bad, or indifferent, 
had, and have, very little to do; in a word, I 
believe that to corrupt morals and very bad 
taste, was and is to be attributed most of what 
I then charged upon bad disembodied people. 

3 I 



38 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

My belief in Immortality is stronger than 
ever; my belief in Clairvoyance and Seer- 
ship, and in Divine inspiration is now a moun- 
tain, where then but a handful of soil. ,, 

Spiritualism is not Spiritism, that is, talk- 
ing with the dead for curiosity, for fleshly grati- 
fication, for selfish gain, for ambitious ends, or 
for unworthy, amusing, and irreligious pur- 
poses. If this was the witch-spiritism that 
Moses condemned, or disapproved of, he did 
well. It should be discouraged, condemned to- 
day as unworthy of rational, royal-souled men 
and women. 

Intelligent, cultured Spiritualists do not 
deny the existence of God— do not deny the ex- 
istence of Jesus of NazareCh, the mediumistic 
man and martyr, overshadowed and infilled 
with the Christ-spirit— do not deny the Holy 
Spirit of truth— do not deny the necessity of 
repentance, of prayer, of faith, of religion, of 
abiding trust, and the importance of living a 
conscientious, spiritual, and holy life. 

Spiritualism, in its broadest sense, is a 
knowledge of everything pertaining to the spir- 
itual nature of human beings. It is cosmopoli- 
tan, eclectic, uplifting, and heaven-inspiring. 
Spiritualists, being believers in the Christ 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 39 

(Christo), have the New Testament promised 
spiritual gifts. Spiritualists believe in the 
great law of evolution. They teach that there 
is a sweet reward for well-doing and certain 
punishment for every wrong action; and that 
all the good and divine that is attained here, 
will be retained when entering the spiritual 
world; that we are building now, by our con- 
duct and characters, our homes in the future 
state of immortality. 

When the genuine Spiritualism is generally 
recognized, and becomes, as it will, the universal 
religion,— when it becomes actualized and out- 
wrought through the personal lives of earth's 
surging millions, it will no longer be selfishly 
said, " mine— mine," but ours, yours, all who 
appropriate it for holy uses. This is the resur- 
rection — a spiritually exalted resurrection 
state in this present life. It is Christ within. 
It is divine altruism. 

I repeat, when Spiritualism in its divinest 
aspects is literally practiced, our country will 
be the universe, our home the world, our rest 
wherever a human heart beats in sympathy with 
our own, and the highest happiness of each will 
be altruism. Then, when this Christly Spirit- 
ualism abounds, will the soil be as free for all 



40 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

to cultivate as the air to breathe ; gardens will 
blossom and bear fruit for the most hnmble; 
and orphans will find homes of tenderness and 
sympathy in all houses. This is Spiritualism, 
pure, simple, and practical. „ 

Dr. Randolph believed in trnie Spiritual- 
ism, he also knew that there was something that 
went by the name of Spiritualism which was 
no nearer true Spiritualism, than modern 
Churchism is Christianity. This kind he gave 
the name of Scientific Spiritualism, and which 
we to-day, call Spiritism. To prove this, I will 
quote fro mhis work, "Soul, the Soul- World, ' ' 
the same volume in which his speech appeared, 
and from which John E. Roberts quotes when 
he desires to tell us what Spiritualism is, but 
he does not give credit to the work, for the 
simple reason, that should he do so, and should 
any of the readers of his pamphlet read the 
work, they would at once become convinced of 
the reality of true Spiritualism, and utter 
uselessness of modern so-called Christianity. 

Dr. Randolph says: '"True Spiritualism is 
the hope of the world, because it is a great hu- 
man necessity, and out of such alone comes all 
that makes sublunary life desirable for civiliza- 
tion and progress; does not spring from any 
religious faith, but from human needs. 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 41 

"The political, civil, social, and religious dis- 
similarities among mankind, the wide world 
over, grow out of the law of differentiation of 
organic structure ; for truth itself is unitary, 
and inherent in soul ; and is universal in its ap- 
plication: hence, mankind merely misunder- 
stands each other; their differences are more 
apparent than real. They have been either in- 
ductive or deductive, whereas they should have 
been both. 

"Should the writer be asked whereof what 
is the use of all this varied irruption of spirit- 
ual forces to the earth just now, he would an- 
swer : Not to break down anything truly human, 
or truly good, but to uproot and destroy that 
parasitical social fungus, which now over- 
whelms science, art and true liberty in these 
dismal ages, and which usurps the name of 
Civilization. The initiatory steps to this great 
consummation consists, first, in removing Fear 
as an element of religion; disabusing the hu- 
man mind of its death, hell, and terror errors ; 
establishing the religion of Science and Reason 
on the ruins of mytho-theology, and inaugurat- 
ing the good time coming in every individual's 
heart y — thence working out in the conduct. This 
can only be done upon the assured basis of a 



42 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

demonstrated immortality. The next step is to 
Bring man to a comprehension of what individ- 
uality means. 

"Individuality: that is my gospel and the 
fitting substitute for a dying or dead Christian- 
ism,— having naught of Christ in it,— whose 
gaunt form lies prostrate on the earth, felled 
by the sturdy strokes of a better faith, the true 
Christ-faith, and from whence issue dark, dense 
clouds of vapor, redolent of fire and brimstone, 
and from whose eyes, blood-shot and glaring, 
there dart forth gleams of hatred and revenge, 
instead of love divine; and from whose lips ter- 
rible cries come out, indicative alike of its own 
expiring agonies, and commemorative of the 
tortured millions who have yielded life at the 
rack, the stake, and inquisition. The Christian 
(Churchism) religion is going out; the religion 
of Jesus Christ is coming in: 

' "I start, then, from the principle that, 
placed in the midst of Nature, we can have only 
positive knowledge of Nature, and that all else 
can be but conjectural, speculative, transient, 
ephemeral, and of no utility whatever. In a 
word, I have faith in Common Sense. 

Now the genius of common sense is the soul 
? of human life, and its composition is Experience, 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM m 

Pain, Pleasure, Hope, and Fear : Consequent- 
ly, people blessed with it, reject as absurd alll 
supernaturalism, in whatever shape it presents 
itself. Miracle, as physical impossibilities, next 
follow in the category of rejected crudities, arid 
the sacred past, whenever it assumes the gar- 
ment of infallible authority, follows in their 
wake. ' ' 

Is there such a thing as a miracle 1 We turn 
to Eliphas Levi for a clear explanation of mir- 
acles, and he tells us that : ' ' We define miracles 
as the natural effects of exceptional causes. 
The immediate action of the human will upon 
the body, or at least that action exercised with- 
out visible means, constitute a miracle in the 
physical order. The influence exercised upon 
wills or intelligencies, either suddenly or within 
a given time, and capable of subjugating 
thoughts, changing the most determined deso- 
lutions, paralysing the most violent passions— 
this influence constitutes a miracle in the moral 
order. The common error concerning miracles 
is to regard them as effects without causes, con- 
tradictions of nature, sudden vagaries of the 
divine mind, not seeing that a single miracle ;of 
this class would destroy the universal harmony, 
and reduce the universe to chaos. There ar© 



44 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

miracles which are impossible, even for God, 
namely, those which involve absurdity. Could 
God be absurd for one instant, neither Himself 
nor the world wonld be in existence the moment 
following. To expect from the Divine Arbiter 
an effect having a disproportionate cause, or 
even no cause at all, is what is called tempting 
God; it is casting one's self into the void. God 
operates by His ivorks—in heaven by angels, 
and on earth by men. Hence, in the circle of 
angelic action, the angels can perform all that 
is possible for God, and in the human circle of 
action men can dispose equally of divine om- 
nipotence. In the heaven of human conceptions, 
it is humanity which creates God, and men think 
that God has made them in His image because 
they have made Him in theirs. The domain of 
man is all corporeal and visible on earth, and 
if he cannot rule suns and stars, he can at least 
calculate their motion, compute their distances, 
and identify his will with their influence ; he can 
modify the atmosphere, up to a certain point, 
upon the seasons, heal or harm his neighbors, 
preserve life and inflict death, the conservation 
of life, including resurrection in certain cases, 
as already established. The absolute in reason 
and volition is the greatest power which can be 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 45 

given any man to attain, and it is by means of 
this power that he performs what astonishes the 
multitudes nnder the name of miracle." So 
much for Levi's definition, and I doubt whether 
a better one could be given by any other Mystic 
or Scientist. 

A miracle, according to the orthodox inter- 
pretation, is said to be constituted through a 
deviation from the course of Nature. But the 
intelligent inquirer at once suggests the inquiry, 
How shall man be enabled by this rule to deter- 
mine when a miracle is performed? For, even 
in the present age of earnest inquiry, who shall 
decide as to the legitimate course of Nature ? In 
the days of Moses and of Jesus, men were not 
so well informed as they are in the present day 
with regard to such matters, and consequently 
were more liable to run into error in drawing 
their deductions from the phenomena by which 
they were surrounded. Upon this point, Spirit- 
ualism declares that a miracle, in the theological 
sense, is scientifically, philosophically, and mor- 
ally impossible ; and that if it were possible that 
a miracle could take place in that sense, it would 
not only destroy the divinity of the Bible, but 
it would destroy divinity itself— and why? 
Thus : no one will deny that God is infinite in his 



46 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

attributes, and that natural law is the effect of 
the perfection and divinity of those attributes, 
and that consequently, all things have been ar- 
ranged upon the wisest and best purpose. Any 
deviation, therefore, from this plan, must be a 
detraction, because there can be no change in 
what is perfect, except for the worse. To base a 
system of religion, as is done in the orthodox 
world, upon the performance of miracle, with 
the theological interpretation of the word, is to 
base that system upon the in-harmony of the 
divine attributes; and in doing so, you neces- 
sarily deprive Diety of that which alone makes 
Him infinite. 

We have seen what true Spiritualism is, 
not only what one man says that it is, but what 
the greatest thinkers of our times and of the 
past say it is. Let us see what Churchism, or 
Churchanity of to-day is. I do not speak of 
Christianity, the esoteric teachings of the Christ, 
but of that which to-day passes as Christianity, 
and has as leaders such men as claim Spiritual- 
ism, Mysticism, Occultism, and other great sys- 
tems to be of the devil. 

It was Dr. Randolph who said that "Christ- 
ianity (modern Churchism), in its dainty care 
of the senses, thought that it could not go too 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 47 

far in the other extreme, and a man was canon- 
ized and calle.d a saint, who made himself per- 
fectly nseless, severed as far as he could, from 
human intercourse, who never washed himself 
or got a new coat till the old one fell in tattered 
rags around him, and who was so much of a 
teetotaler as to have a whole fountain to him- 
self. Christianity put the spirit in contrast with 
the senses. But when you carry that contrast 
to the utmost, what do you behold ! what do you 
accomplish? The answer rolls up in thunder 
tones, 'You destroy the balance of the human 
faculties, and provoke the most fatal and ter- 
rible reactions.' No sensualities among the 
ancients were ever so disgustingly incurable, 
as those which prevailed in Christian lands, 
and which are the direct and natural conse- 
quences of Christian teachings." 

This should not be understood as meaning 
the esoteric teachings of the Christ, but the 
teachings and actions of those who had lost the 
esoteric meaning of His teachings, and there- 
fore interpreted his teachings in the exoteric 
sense, and became fanatics in the true sense 
of the word. It was then, as it is at the present 
time among Churchanity. I believe that the 
doctrine of i ' Justification by Faith, ' ' or the for- 



48 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

giveness of sin through prayer, has more to do 
with the crimes of to-day, than all other causes 
combined. 

' ' In truth, the excitement of Christian fanat- 
icism is kindred even to the most furious and 
uncontrollable animality. Look at the majority 
of preacher's sons— like father, like son— and 
then study the natural history, origin and re- 
sults, of the methodistic love-feasts, the pro- 
fessed object of which is to promote spiritual 
chastity. Henry VIII could zealously defend 
the faith, and yet be a brute all the while ; for 
in one short life-time, he, for the good of the 
Church, and the promotion of morals, divorced 
Catharine or Arragon, married and murdered 
Anne Boleyn, and Jane Seymour; broke the 
hearts of five others, and stigmatized Anne of 
Cleves as a "Flanders Mare." Eight wives 
had this holy defender of the faith. Remem- 
ber the relation of cause and effect. ' ' 

Let the church of to-day, or any other time, 
bring us one example of such hellish work, that 
was done by any single Occultist, Mystic or 
Spiritualist, except such as disbelieved in the 
esoteric part of these systems, not believing that 
there was a God, a Christ, or that man was im- 
mortal. Such do not confess to be followers of 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 49 

the esoteric part of these doctrines, but believe 
in the cold, scientific side of the doctrine. These 
men, are usually, if not always, the children of 
Abortionists, and are themselves but the effect 
of a cause over which they had, and have, not 
the slightest control. These men should not b^ 
judged by their actions or doings, as they are 
not responsible for them. The crime, or seeds 
of the crime, were implanted into their very 
soul, by the unnatural mother that brought them 
forth. Of course, I do not claim that this is not 
also the cause of modern Churchism, but fully 
believe that it is, but then, "Justification by 
Faith, ' ' is in itself a doctrine of degeneration. 

"The spiritual fever of the multitude ren- 
ders them easy dupes to the intellect of the 
few, simply because the multitudes are not in- 
dividuals. It is said that Christianity— the or- 
dinary, common sort— abolishes slavery, which 
is not true; but if it were, the gospel only de- 
stroys the bondage of the body, while it brings 
a more terrible set of shackles for the soul : 

Christianity is not the religion of Jesus 
the Christ, and never was or can be : Glance at, 
tthe Crusades ; forget their poetical aspects, and 
the benefits they conferred, but never contem- 
plated ; and were they not the poorest insanities 



50 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

into which nations ever rushed? not even ex- 
cepting the American rebellion: Therefore, it is 
self-apparent that the only defense man has 
against the wiles of priestcraft, and the whims 
of despots, are in these very despised senses; 
because they give him a consciousness of 
strength with which despots dare not trifle. 
Mankind has, as the fruit of the past miscalled 
Spiritualism, a self-denial, an asceticism most 
unnatural, with the morbid mockery of pseudo- 
pious old maids, to make it ridiculous, a gross 
and abominable sensuality as unnatural; but 
the reaction against that asceticism, the attempt 
of suppressed forces to assert and regain their 
rights; and under the pretense of rendering 
every individual the freedom of Christ, and 
clothing him with a spiritual dignity, and an in- 
tellectual eminence, which teaches him to des- 
pise the poor Greek and Roman, you simply 
enthrone Jesuitism as the queen of the world. 
This, then, is my verdict on common, popular 
Christianity,— that it flatters its adherents with 
receiving a spiritual elevation and disenthral- 
ment, but that it changes society into an arid 
and joyless thing, to be tossed, and twisted, and 
trampled, as it may suit the pleasure of diplo- 
mats and ecclesiastics. 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 51 

Greatly, therefore, are they deceived, or 
greatly do they deceive others, who aver that 
such a Christianity, or Churchanity is the re- 
ligion of the people. 

Bnt at last, this intellectual phase of human 
development, and with it that sort of Christ- 
ianity, is drawing to a close. We are entering 
on the moral phase of humanity's growth, the 
long struggle of the human will against the in- 
tellectual weapons and potent machinery of des- 
pots, priests, and politicians, the accursed trin- 
ity which has ever hindered our normal growth, 
and repressed the aspirations of man. This 
struggle will inevitably last long. The people 
must drive these tyrants into insignificance and 
efface them from the earth by the grandeur of 
their own superiority : The time has come when 
the people can bear the truth told them, and 
when that time is fully ripe, deeds worthy of 
America's most valiant battles in the past and 
present will flash and fulminate in a new sense 
from her shores; deeds worthy of her noblest 
aspirations; for the future will utter to earth 
and heaven, in thunder tones, what I am here 
stating, that the moral phase of humanity has 
begun. ' ' 

The reader may say; it is all well enough 



52 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

to tell ns what modern Christianity or Church - 
ism is, but how are we to help it? how make 
things different? The answer is very simple, 
and the only way is, to have a universal reli- 
gion, without sect or ism, one that the rich and 
poor alike can accept. We are all the children 
of the Great All; and it is our actual relation 
to the Great All that we are to determine. The 
Past to us is a nonentity. Historical facts con- 
cern us not at all. Of the Future we speculate 
most, but can know absolutely nothing,— save 
by direct inspiration and intromission, — except 
that the universe is a great fact, and will ever 
be such. Humanity's eternal religion, we de- 
voutly believe in,— we individualists,— the be- 
lief in God and immortality; but our God is the 
everlasting Life that flows around us, and of 
which we are a part, this part is the soul. Im- 
mortality to us is a living fact, and a beautiful 
ideal, that ever floats before us, as a gossamer 
cloud floats on the bright, gleaming wings of 
the morning zephyr, all bespangled with the 
diamond eyes of pearly dew; nor can we speak 
of it with the disgusting familiarity of modern 
churchmen, or some of the modern Spiritists, 
who seem to know the very will and desire of 
God. 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 53 

Now, in nature, if we look with our natural 
eyes, and do not permit ourselves to be crazed 
by creeds, theologies, and dull metaphysics, of 
the wild vagaries and speculations of mere dab- 
step in the art of thinking, who, ever and anon, 
set up for Sir Oracles, and modern Pythons, 
what are the two things in chief we observe? 
The reply is, an intense unity, and a boundless 
multiformity, which are at once the results and 
the conditions of each other. The essence is 
one, and the aspects are manifold, because 
the essence is one; and the contrary: This 
might seem simple, and altogether indubitable; 
but, look how it is denied by so-called Christians 
and philosophical deists, who make no great 
pretensions to Christianity at all. For the 
Christian or Churchman, there are three om- 
nipotent essences,— a spirit of omnipotent good, 
called Jehovah; an omnipotent antagonist, 
called Satan; and a limitless lump of earth 
called matter. Now these three essences are 
exactly equivalent to no essence at all: There 
is a total destruction of all unity, and it is not 
diversity which we behold, branching, from a 
central source of unity, but the fragments of 
the chaos matter, which Jehovah and Devil, in 
their ferocious hate, hurl at each other's head. 

4 I 



V 



54 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

We are not much better off if we adopt the dual- 
ity of the philosophic theists, because two es- 
sences are as fatal to cosmic unity as three ;-- 
we merely miss the liveliness which the Devil 
gave to the concern;— and if we are to have 
chaos, let us by all means have a devil to make 
the thing interesting. 

Hireling priests offer us a God far beyond 
the moon, somewhere on the confines of outer- 
most space; by doing which, they declare the 
principle of individuality, or the right of self- 
judgment paramount to all others,— so far as 
they are concerned, and in the same breath ig- 
nore, and utterly deny it in all the rest of man- 
kind. 

"As like as two P's" are priests and poli- 
ticians; for these Jast seldom have the genius 
or generosity to govern for man's highest good, 
but they are glad when the people are terrified 
by the priestly phantoms of revengeful Gods: 

because they too recognize individualism as a 
great and good, because true principle; and 
feeling that "knowledge is power," they 
tremble lest the people, breaking their priestly 
ligaments, < will become full and rounded char- 
acters, real genuine individuals, and then, adi^u 
to the sinecures; farewell, loaves and fiishes, for 
lo: "Othello's occupation's gone." 



\ 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 55 

The first step toward the overthrow of our 
social, and all other evils, and the woes of every 
kind— according to common sense— must be the 
destruction of a one-sided Spiritualism, or phil- 
osophy, which models, or attempts to model, 
the community according to its insane caprice, 
and to drag it away as far as possible from 
Nature. But how is this done? You preach to 
priests and government in vain. They are the 
advocates of a miserable conservatism, and even 
when they are not, they are stupid, as they al- 
ways are indifferent; at all events, the godlike 
growth of the community they sneer at as the 
dreams of fools, or the delusion of men too hon- 
est for this world. When you talk to them of 
Nature, they think you are quoting D'Rolbach, 
Grieves, Rosseau, or the dreams of some moon- 
struck poet, and it is the chief article of their 
creed, that Rosseau was a madman, Montaigne 
a fool, Holbach a knave, Grieves a dreamer. 
Swedenborg a fanatic, and your modern seer 
or poet a lunatic on stilts. To whom then, must 
you appeal? To the man— the individual: Dis- 
enthral him from sectisms, and creed, and 
party; isolate him from his old associations; 
paralyze the grasp that custom has upon his 
thoughts, and actions, make him a free and 



56 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

strong man, eager to be a hero, whenever so- 
ciety demands heroic actions, and heroic sacri- 
fices, and lead him to the feet of the Christ. 
Now there are fonr ways in which this must be 
accomplished: first, by invigorating the will; 
second, by disabusing his mind of the old, silly, 
pedantic notion, that he consists of a body and 
soul, eternally at war with each other, and en- 
abling him to feel that he is a vital unity, mani- 
festing itself by multiformity; third, by mak- 
ing him regard Nature as the Unity of unities ; 
and the Multiformity of multiformities ; fourth, 
by arranging before him each object in Na- 
ture—tree, bud, flower, insect, bird,— as a mul- 
tiform unity. 

"By invigorating his will, you not merely 
give him positive force for all his future march ; 
you not only arm him with mighty resolves, for 
mighty achievements; but you give him a 
weapon with which to break that which is his 
most unconquerable hindrance, most formidable 
foe— the bondage of Conventionalism. By 
stamping deep in his breast, also, the image of 
himself, as a multiform unity; and not a com- 
pound of soul and body, not a mere mixture of 
spirit and matter, nor a bundle of parts, each 
independent of the other in itself, and ham- 



v 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 5? 

mered into temporary relationship with it^ 
neighbor;— but as a multiform unit of the great 
eternal oneness— the TJni Omni Oversold: By 
so doing, you not simply give him the boon of 
health, but also the sense of affinity for the true, 
the Beautiful, and the Good (God); and that 
new sense will prodigiously elevate him, and 
the knowledge of brotherhood will fill his very 
soul with jovj and make his wearied spirit sing 
for very gladness. A universal religion will 
bring in a Universal Brotherhood, the dream 
of the ages. 

"The univercoelum will be none the less one 
and many-fold if we regard it as mysterious. 
It will be none the less beautiful, vast, and sub- 
lime; nor will it lose aught of its joys, but it 
will still shine with a sacred glory,— still be * 
palace where the banquet of life is spread, and 
a temple, inspiring the divinest visions, and di- 
vinest valor — a temple wherein we may offer 
the worship of holiest emotion— of Titanic la- 
bors, of Martyrdoms for Humanity, and which 
all true men shudder to desecrate by a base de= 
sire, or dishonorable action. When, therefore^ 
his will is invigorated, after these full, intelli- 
gible and varied lessons, and "his moral trans- 
formation is effected, man must be taken into 



58 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

the region of the unknown— into that wild, 
weird clime, that lieth sublime, out of space, 
out of time, and, first of all into the mysterious 
depths of his own wonderful nature. 

"This descent into the abysses of his own 
mystery is intuitionalism. Not for the sake of 
abstraction, self-analysis, or speculation, do I 
recommend this course, — for there can be no 
more unwholesome occupation than a man's al- 
ways looking into his intellectual stomach,— but 
because the religious transformation of the in- 
dividual cannot be begun, or finished, without 
intuitionalism. ' ' 

It is from the prof oundest sense of mystery 
in himself that he rises in the universal scale. 
Individual men, aggregated after such moral 
and religious transformation, form the mater- 
ials for the future social state of integral har- 
mony, beautiful as a sunbeam just bursting on 
the world. "Man know thyself," has been the 
command of the ages, and will be as long as 
life lasts on this or any other planet. ' ' Master 
thyself, and thou mayst be master over all 
things," is not an idle saying, but is an awful 
fact. 

The chief obstacles to the progress of indi- 
vidualism, are the two leading doctrines of mod- 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 59 

era Christianity, or Churchism, and which are 
as distinct from the Heart-Religion of the 
Martyr of Calvary, namely, the doctrine of 
Justification by Faith, and that of Resignation ; 
because utter resignation is utter folly, and 
sheer nonsense. "Work out your own salva- 
tion" is the word and the motto of a true and 
genuine manhood,— which is also God-hood: 
The atrocious absurdity of the doctrine of 
resignation is most graphically and truly shown 
in the character of "Uncle Tom,"— that "Jesus 
Christ, in ebony," as Carlyle called him. Self- 
defense, self-preservation, and personal, and 
hence, national conservation, is the primal law 
of human existence, written by the finger of 
the eternal God in every human heart, and en- 
graved in the star-gems on the everlasting 
scroll of the arching sky. Nor is it necessary to 
say, that not a single one of the followers of 
the modern church carry out this doctrine of 
"resignation," it is a farce, pure and simple. 
Just try to force anything on one of these that 
claim to believe in this doctrine and see what 
will happen. 

As to justification by faith, just think of 
all your friends who are Methodists or Evan- 
gelicals : It makes men vegetables or machines, 



60 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

while its twin dogma makes devils under the 
garb of saints. I boldly make the claim that 
nearly all the crimes known to mankind, are 
really caused by this foul and unjust doctrine, 
it gives a man the opportunity to commit any 
crime, no matter how terrible, with the privi- 
lege that he recant, as it were, and simply pray 
for forgiveness. His victim may have suffered 
all the pangs of hell and continue to suffer, but 
he, by simply saying a few prayers, will be for- 
given and need not suffer for his crime. .This— 
doctrine is so utterly unjust, that it seems im- 
possible~lT^liould J)e believed by any rational 
mind, and yet, through superstition, there are 
thousands that believe this to be a true faith, 
not knowing that the Christ, whom they believe 
they are following, never taught such a doc- 
trine, but that He did teach the law of Karma, 
as taught by all true Mystics and Occultists, 
namely, "As thou soweth, so shalt thou reap." 
If a man commits a wrong he must suffer for it, 
and there is no law in heaven or earth, through 
which he can escape his just punishment. I do 
not doubt but that a sin committed by one which 
does not hurt any one else but himself, may be 
forgiven, as it has caused no other person to 
suffer, but still, the sin that we commit against 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 61 

ourself, is committed against the nation, or the 
whole, as we are but a part of the one great 
Whole. 

" l Justification by faith, 7 is a sun-greened 
carcass, a bog, and its loathsomeness offends 
the sense of all honest men: In saying this, I 
agree with Lessing, who wrote long since these 
memorable words: 'The religion of Jesus 
Christ and the Christian religion are not at all 
the same thing.' In fact, they are about as like 
as a horse-chestnut and a chestnut hor&e. The 
Emanuel, Jesus Christ, I believe to have been 
a divine soul, and a great reformer. If he were 
on earth to-day, is there a single follower of 
his that he would not be ashamed off or that 
would own him if not dressed in the tip of the 
fashion? " (Dr. Randolph.) 

Mr. Roberts further says: "Dr. Randolph 
renounced Soiritualism at one time, but was 

A. 7 

again ensnared. Dear reader, take warning: 
Few, if any, of those who are caught in the 
awful drag-net of Spiritualism e~er escape, 
but are forever held in its deadly embrace, 
and go down. to hell, there to spend endless ages 
of eternal night among the demons (devils) 
that seduced them. ' ' 

In the first place, it is utterly and absolutely 



62 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

false that Dr. Randolph ever renounced or de- 
nounced, true Spiritualism, and I defy any one 
person, or any persons to prove that he did. It 
is a fact that he denounced Spiritualism in 
words that cannot be mistaken, as is proven in 
the speech made by him in the city of New 
York, in 1858, and which appeared in his work, 
'Soul, the Soul World," but in that same work, 
he defends true Spiritualism, and tells us that 
it will be the hope of the world. I have no doubt 
but that Mr. Roberts read this work, but he did 
not dare to give the whole truth, nor explain 
what Dr. Randolph meant in his speech, his 
quotation, therefore, in the light the readers of 
the booklet take it, is worse than a falsehood, it 
is a down-right lie, given purposely to deceive 
the readers and make Spiritualism appear in a 
false light. 

I believe we are willing to admit the fact, 
that the person once accepting true Spiritualism 
iiever returns to the Orthodox church, or mod- 
ern Churchanity, and he certainly has very good 
reason for not going back. A man that comes 
out of darkness into light would be very foolish, 
indeed, to return to the darkness from whence he 
came. There are but few that ever denounce 
true Spiritualism after they once accept it and 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 63 

learn of the things that it can give unto them, 
and as far as I myself am concerned I know 
of none that ever gave np the true Mysticism', 
Occult, or Spiritualism, for the church. 

There is not a single pamphlet, or tract that 
ever was issued by a Churchman, that did noi 
lay especial stress on the devil and hell, it is the 
very foundation on which Churchanity rests. 
Take away their devil and their hell, and there 
will be no church. The followers of Churchan- 
ity are held in the bonds of fear, a fear of a 
devil and an eternal hell, both of which have 
no real existence. We find in the Bible that 
God created Heaven and earth, but in no place 
of that book are we able to find that He created 
a Hell and a devil to attend the gates thereof; 
It is also a fact, that true Spiritualism, Occult- 
ism and Mysticism has thousands of followers, 
but neither rests on a foundation of a hell or a 
devil, but on the true foundation of Love and an 
eternal Loving God. It is for this reason that 
these grand systems hold their followers. "Love 
is God," for St. John tells us that "God is 
Love." We need no devil, nor do we need a 
literal hell, for we know full well that our con^ 
science is either our heaven or our hell, and that 
the Astral is the great book that is opened be. 



64 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

fore us at death, in which we may, and must 
read and see the wrongs that we have committed 
while in the earth life, and reap our just pun- 
ishment for the wrongs thus committed. We 
need no God to punish us, our guilty conscience 
will do that. It is not a revengeful God that 
punishes mankind, but the soul of man does that 
itself. The Master said: "The hand that smites 
thee is thine own," we need be told no more, for 
we understand. 

Is there a devil? This is the question that 
has been asked for ages by men in all walks of 
life. There is no proof that there has ever 
been such a being. That there is a principle 
which may be called evil, cannot be doubted, but 
this is not a being, and has no other existence 
except in man, and is the negative of good. 
To find out from whence the devil came, we 
must go back to Mythology, and I can do noth- 
ing better than to quote the Rev. Moses Hull, 
in his book, "All About Devils," he says: "To 
comprehend the whole in one short story, all, 
01 about all, who believe in a devil believe that 
he was made the grandest and 'most noble Ro- 
man of them all.' He was the finest specimen 
of what shall I say— humanity or Divinity? 
among all of God's offspring. God thought so 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 65 

much of him that he took him into his particular 
confidence— made him his secretary, as it were. 
In this God made no mistake, for everything 
went of! well under Lucifer's administration. 
When the books were wanted for examination 
they were always on hand, ready for examina- 
tion; and they were always posted and correct. 
There were then no defalcations in heaven— no 
flights to Canada— there was no boodle— there 
were no heavenly boodlers— no Cronin murder 
cases— no jury bribing. In fact, there was noth- 
ing to mar, nothing to make afraid : 

"But for some reason a meeting was called 
of the heavenly cabinet and very important bus- 
iness transacted, probably nothing less than the 
creation of the planet on which we live, which, 
it must be conceded, was important to us, and 
Satan, by some oversight, was not called to that 
meeting. "Whether he was slighted on purpose 
or whether it was an accident, is not quite clear. 
But, be that as it may, Satan took umbrage ; he 
felt that it was hardly a fair deal to make him 
responsible for all the business transacted in 
heaven and then to go on and transact the most 
important business without consulting him. He 
probably hinted his disaffection to a few of his 
most intimate friends, some of whom were not 
very good at keeping a secret. 



66 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

* ' The result was, the news of a misunderstand- 
ing between Satan and God, got into the hands 
of the reporters and became public that God 
sent to the devil, and told him that if he chose 
to tender his portfolio, his resignation would 
be accepted. But the devil determined not to 
resign under a cloud; he would wait until mat- 
ters settled somewhat. God then pre-emptorily 
demanded his resignation, but Satan, feeling 
that "Possession was nine points of the law," 
obstinately refused; whereupon God commis- 
sioned Michael to go and take possession of the 
devil's books and office, at no matter what cost 
But the devil had one-third of heaven armed 
and equipped for battle. John, in the Apocal- 
ypse, parodied heathen mythology as follows : 

11 'And there was war in heaven; Michael and 
his angels fought against the dragon; and the 
dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed 
not; neither was their place found any more in 
^leaven. And the great dragon was cast out, 
and that old serpent, called the devil, and Satan, 
which deceiveth the whole world; he was cast 
out into the earth, and his angels were cast out 
with him. Therefore rejoice ye heavens, and 
ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters 
of the earth and of the sea ; for the devil is come 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 67 

down unto you having great wrath because he 
knoweth that he hath but a short time.'— Rev. 
xii:7-12. 

" Happy had it been for the inhabitants of 
earth if the Gods and devils had either settled 
their quarrel or continued their 'wart in 
heaven,' but it seems that when the devils were 
cast out they were not conquered— the battle 
did not end. The only change was the removal 
of the arena from heaven to earth. Here the 
battle ^ias been going on ever since.' ' 

That this is all symbolic and has a deep and 
inner meaning, need not be said here. The 
devil is not a being, nor an individual, but is a 
principle in man. We take the child before it 
reaches the age of understanding, and it is neu- 
tral, but after it gets to a certain age, there are 
two forces working in its " inner' ' being, one of 
these will be the winner, it will either be the 
g^od, or the bad. I believe that if mankind 
would be born right, and not be taught any re- 
vengeful God, nor yet be taught fear, after be- 
Hg born, the good would always predominate. 
As said before, God only created heaven and 
earth. Holy Scripture does not say that He cre- 
ated either devil or hell, and therefore both are 
not created things, but principles. When God 



68 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

asked Satan from whence he came, he said: 
i ' From going to and fro in the earth, and from 
waiting up and down in it." Showing that^it 
is a principle, not a person or individual, that it 
is not a hell as taught, by orthodoxism, but that 
it is something which can be found throughout 
the entire world, and, a part of every individual, 
until man becomes Master over himself. 

"What is hell? There are three words in 
the Greek Testament rendered hell; but in no 
case does it say that God created a hell. One 
is Hades, which signifies the place or the state 
of death, this might be as much as to say that 
heaven and hell are identical. However, I be- 
lieve this word to mean the state through which 
the so-called dead pass immediately after the 
change. Another is Gehenna, which was a val- 
ley just south of Jerusalem, where a fire was 
kept continually burning to cremate the filth 
of the city, this might well be called a hell on 
account of the continual consuming of material 
and the odor that necessarily came from the 
burning of filth, 

"The third was a Tartarus of Tartarosus, a 
place located in Lake Avernus. The exact lo- 
cation of Lake Avernus, and Surbonus and other 
mythological places, are like Sodom and Gomor- 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 69 

rah, hard to determine. But they were some- 
where in what was once the valley of the Nile. 
These lakes had neither outlet nor inlet, the 
water came in by the overflow of the Nile and 
passed out by evaporation. 

i 'Decaying vegetation in the region of these 
lakes gave the smell of brimstone, and the roll- 
ing of the waves in the light of the moon caused 
the lake to look like a high lake of fire. Hug*, 
phosphoric insects flying over the lakes looked 
like balls of fire, or sparks from the lake. Thus 
from a place that had an existence in Nature, 
mythology has woven a cloth out of imagina- 
tion, and we have the hell of brimstone, as 
preached by the orthodox church of the present 
day. Taking then, the Bible for authority, we 
find that there is no such place for mankind 
after they have passed beyond the pale of this 
world, and that hell, in every case, meant a 
place situated in this world. Hell is not a place, 
but a condition. Inharmony is hell, so is an 
uneasy conscience, and a man may be in hell 
long before he is dead. The devil is not an in- 
dividual or a being, but a principle in man. ' ' 

Mr. Roberts further says: "Many wonder 
why * physical manifestations ' are best ob- 
tained in darkened rooms. Jesus says : ' Every 

5 I 



70 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither 
cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be re- 
proved.' " 

• It does not seem that those who do wrong 
today, fear the light, especially when we take 
notice of the rogues and villains that we can 
meet every hour of the day, they do no more 
fear light than darkness, but this had no more 
to do with Spiritualism than has the part of 
Scripture that Mr). Roberts quotes. In the 
28th chapter of Matthew, an angel appeared to 
the two Marys at the sepulchre; and what is 
more, in the present age of scepticism, it ivas 
aone in the dark, just before the dawn of day. 
You believe that, but reject, ay, you denounce, 
bitterly denounce the dark circles of modern 
times, and utterly reject the manifestations oc- 
curring in such circles. It is a pity that Mr. 
Roberts did not live at that time, and we may 
rest assured that he would have issued a booklet, 
setting forth the fact that the devil had risen 
instead of the Christ, for the reason that the 
angel appeared in the dark. "There are none 
so bli^d as those that will not see." 

Mr. Roberts would have us believe that Spir- 
itualists uphold promiscuous adultery, and says 
this on the subject: "At a Spiritual conven- 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 71 

tion held in Rutland, Vt., the following resolu- 
tion was presented: l Resolved, that the only 
true and natural marriage is an exclusive con- 
jugal love between one man and one woman; 
and the only true home is the isolated home 
based upon this exclusive love.' This seems 
at first a very innocent resolution; but read it 
again. To make it plain, I quote the language 
of another Spiritualist, spoken 'in defense of 
a medium known as the Rev. John Spear, who 
became the father of an illegitimate child by the 
direction of the spirit/ 'It is reserved for 
this our day, under the inspiration of the spirit 
world, for a quiet, equable, retiring woman to 
rise up in the dignity of her womanhood, and 
declare in the face of her oppressors and a 
scowling world, 'I will be free, and no man, or 
set of men, no church, no state, shall withhold 
from me the realization of that purest of all 
aspirations inherent in every true woman, the 
right to rebeget myself when, and by whom, 
and under such circumstances as to me seem 
fit and best. ' Mrs. Lewis, in a speech delivered 
at Ravenna, Ohio, said : To confine her to love 
one man was an abridgement of her rights. Al- 
though she had one husband in Cleveland, she 
considered herself married to the whole human 



72 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

race. All men were her husbands, and she had 
an undying love for them. ' What business is it 
to the world, whether one man is the father of 
my children, or ten men are? I have a right to 
say who shall be the father of my offspring/ 
Now we can better understand the Rutland, Vt., 
resolution: one man or woman at a time, but 
should he or she fail to love that one exclus- 
ively, discard him or her, and find another 
4 ' affinity. " Such is the "Divine Law of Mar- 
riage' ' instituted by Spiritualists under the di- 
rection of the seducing spirits; and of course, 
this constitutes one of the many * doctrines of 
devils.' " 

So much for Mr. Roberts. The resolution 
passed by the convention at Rutland, Vt, was 
passed by a convention of Spiritualists, not 
Spiritists, and it is not a resolution for any man 
or set of men to be ashamed of, as it voiced the 
true definition of marriage. These Spiritual- 
its have done their duty, and they cannot be 
held accountable what some one else may say 
in Ohio. These were Spiritualists, while the 
one who said the other, may have been a spirit- 
ist, and there is very little relation between the 
Two. In fact, there is no more relation between 
Spiritualism and spiritism, than there is be- 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 73 

tween the esoteric Christ-teachings and modern 
Churchanity, to which latter class Mr. Roberts 
belongs. I would ask, does it take a spirit to 
tell a man to seduce a girl? I doubt it very 
much, if it does, then it accounts for the fact 
that so many preachers of the gospel are annu- 
ally arrested and imprisoned for this very 
crime. Let Mr. Roberts mention one true 
Spiritualist, that is today in prison for any of 
these crimes, that he charges to Spiritualism, 
he cannot do it ; but on the other hand, we could 
mention many preachers who are today serving 
sentences for assaulting or seducing girls and 
women, but a few miles from where I now write 
this lives a young woman who is the mother ox 
several children, but who is unmarried. Not 
far from where she lives there lives a minister 
of the gospel who declares that they are children 
of God. I have no doubt but that they are, 
since they may really have been conceived in 
Love, but I, and many others that know the 
circumstances, have long ago come to the con- 
clusion that he happens to be that identical god. 
There are more so-called Christians in prison 
today for crimes of this kind, than there are of 
all other teachings combined. What Mrs. Lewis 
says or has said, has no more to do with the 



74 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

resolutions passed at Rutland, than lias Mr. 
Koberls. The convention can no more control 
the speech of others than can any other man or 
set of men. Each individual is a free moral 
agent, and each one must be responsible for 
what he or she does or says. 

What is marriage! "That which God has 
joined together let no man put asunder." This 
has come down to us for ages past, but do we 
recognize what the few words, "What God has 
joined, " mean? The clergy of today, in their 
.mad rush for money, have changed it so, that 
ic seems to mean that what I, the priest or min- 
ister have joined, let no man part., but— the di- 
vorce court. Let us for but a minute examine the 
question in a true light: St. John tells us: 
"God is Love," and also "Love is God," if we 
wish to believe in the Bible, we must believe 
that Love is the grandest thing given to man, 
aiat man should love, seems to be proven by 
the fact that there are two of us, man and 
woman, but be this as it may, we still find in 
our marriage rites, that "what God has joined 
together, let no man part," and if God is Love, 
as St. John tells us that He is, then our mar- 
riage ceremony should read: "What Love has 
joined together, let no man say aught against 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 75 

it." Then, and then only, will marriage be as 
it should be. I go still further, and say, that 
the marriage ceremony as it is today performed, 
xs a man-made institution, and has naught of 
God in it, it is made for greed and to enslave 
men and women, gives license to lust, under the 
cloak or marriage, and brings all the horrors 
of this life, and throws a shadow on the life to 
come; it is an unrighteous, ungodly institution, 
and as long as it continues, we will have nothing 
but what society presents everywhere, namely 
—sexual and matrimonial perversions, misde- 
meanors, and diabolism of every name and 
grade, a growing and significant unwillingness 
to assume the risks and burdens of leg&l mar- 
riage, celibacy, intensified and morbid amative- 
ness, sexual madness, masturbation, seductions, 
rapes, and nameless extremes; prostitution, de- 
bauchery and profligacy, connubial aversion 
and disgust marital infidelity and intrigues, 
jealousies, adulteries, hypocrisy, wedded misery, 
abortions, insanity, murders, suicides, etc. [t 
is a modern Christian institution, and the 
fruits cannot be expected to be anything else 
but what they are. True marriage cannot be 
performed by a priest for so much a pair, and 
1 fearlessly say that the marriage ceremony is 



76 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

a bad institution, because it binds two people to- 
gether that in many cases were never intended 
for each other, and unless they are parted, or 
part themselves there is a pure hell in that 
family for life, not only does it effect them, but 
also their children, and all the crimes named 
before, are bred in that family, and many more 
not named. Is this marriage, or is it not? It 
gives the man license to use the body of his 
wife as he would use that of a houri, worse yet, 
it breeds all the crime that man can suffer with, 
it is but legal prostitution and debauchery, 
made legal by a priest. 

I claim that the marriage ceremony is abso- 
lutely useless. What Love puts together, or 
marries, let no man part, nor can any man or 
set of men, or any law, or set of laws, part them, 
they are one. Can a priest do anything more 
than love has already done? Do his few words 
help anything? Never, if two people love each 
other, then they are married. Love (God) has 
/married them and no man can part that which 
God has joined, nor can any man bind them 
closer than they are already bound. Why, then, 
do we need the help of a priest to give the 
license to commit crime, by giving humanity a 
false idea of marriage, namely, the idea of pos- 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 77 

session? The church, so-called Christianity, 
speaks so much about Divinity, conversion, etc., 
and yet they hold on to everything that fosters 
crime, as though it was their very life, and never 
do they try to make life more endurable. , 

When a man Loves a woman, and that 
woman loves the man in return, that is the True, 
Holy, and Sacred Marriage, the marriage insti- 
tuted by God, and no man can interfere, nor 
help anything or legalize it. If two people do 
not love each other, but marry because of par- 
ents, money, religion, etc., that is prostitution 
and no amount of ceremonies can make it any- 
thing else, no matter what a priest may say, it 
is prostitution and debauchery still, and will 
continue to be as long as they remain together. 
Man has joined them, and God or Love had 
nothing to do with it. If two people are bound 
together that do not love each other, that is not 
marriage, but a license or bond to prostitute, 
and it needs no court to divorce or dis-marrv 
them, for the reason that they are not married. 
It may take a court to sever the bond, but not 
the marriage, that was severed when love died. 
Nature or God's law is, that when two people 
Love, they are married, when that Love is dead, 
they are free from each other, as Love or God 



78 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

no longer binds them and our courts should rec- 
ognize it thus, and nine-tenths of the misery of 
the world would be saved. I see the Chris- 
tian (!) who reads this, hold up his hands in 
horror, and exclaim: "Why, then, two people 
could go together just for fun for awhile, and 
when they get tired, just part" I ask, would 
it be any worse than it is now! Do they not do 
the same thing now ! All they do now, is to get 
married, live a life of hell for awhile, beget 
children, sow the seeds of crime in their little 
brains, go to the brothel between time, and do 
everything else, and at last, seek a divorce— get 
it— and try again. The former would be much 
better, for then they would part as soon as they 
were tired of each other, they would not fight., 
bear children, and commit all the other crimes 
first, and then after all self-respect is gone, part 
after all. Surely the first is the best, for when 
they want to part, they will part anyhow 
whether legally married or not. Of what use, 
then, is the ceremony, except to give the priest 
en easy living, and keep up a foul institution. 
Marriage, as it is today, is a curse to humanity, 
ho marriage can be recognized by God unless 
it is bound with Love, and when it is thus bound, 
no other ceremony is needed. Marriage today, 
gives ownership, ownership is ruin to happiness. 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 79 

It was Dr. Randolph that said: "The teem- 
ing millions need light in order to learn how and 
whom to love, as love should really be; and the 
only feasible plan to give that blessing to the 
earth is to make the matter a common-school 
affair all over ihe land, and let Anthropology, 
in all its branches, become an ordinary and 
every day study by every child, in every school 
in the country. *Tis education forms the com- 
mon mind; just as the twig is bent the tree's 
inclined. ' Begin with the children, and you 
will begin right; and in training them up as 
they should be, in a knowledge proper to man- 
kind in their childhood, when they grow up they 
will not depart therefrom. Some such plan as 
this, in my opinion, is the only true method, and 
the only true and really effective antidote to the 
marital chills and fevers of the age, a very 
abnormal one in that respect 

"I am in favor of monogamic marriage, royal 
and legal; but I am also dead-set against the 
false sort, even when law-and-ehurch-sane- 
tioned; and yet it will not do to utterly break it 
down, for there is as yet no substitute, no better 
way known. Bitterly hostile to all forms of 
libertinage and promiscuity, as I am to abor- 
tion and abortion-brokers, still under no cir- 



80 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

oumstance would I compel a couple to live to- 
gether as man and wife who bred nothing but 
ill-will toward each other, moral consumption, 
domestic misery, and badly organized children ; 
for to do so were to commit a crime against 
nature, therefore against God. ' ' 

This is exactly what the marriage ceremony 
ol today does, it binds those together that were 
never intended to be put together, and on ac- 
count of false ideas and the belief that owner- 
ship is granted through marriage, these parties 
are held together as by a bond of iron, and the 
result is a hell, and badly organized children, 
who have crime born into them, and are bound 
to become criminals some time or other in their 
life. 

"Our wives are as free of obligation to us 
as our mistresses. To bind them in the chains 
of duty agreeable only to our feelings is a crime 
and a profanation. To force or demand the 
consolations of love from one who cannot read- 
ily, freely, fully, and wholly yield them to us, 
is sacrilege, and a crime against the divinity 
and majesty of the human soul, both that of the 
demander and the demandee. Yet, many, if not 
almost all, children are born under just such 
conditions, is it any wonder that the world is 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 81 

lull of criminals? The answer comes in thun- 
dering tones, No! no! no! 

A child born under such conditions, must be 
morbid, and morbidness is of necessity the 
proper condition to produce crime. 

"Passional license is not, and never will be, 
marriage, any more than pork steak and chicken 
iixins constitute the joys of the " world to come/' 

"No man has a right to exact the fulfill- 
ment, of a promise obtained from a woman un- 
der the impression that she was beloved, or 
wrested from her generous charity and com- 
passion. To do so is to forfeit manhood-- nn 
act no true male can be capable of doing. True, 
it is done, but the doers are things, not men. 

"New love requires danger and impediments 
in its path, to round it out to fullness. Mature 
love revives, when we can no longer kindle a 
new flame in the souls of others. 

"Love is a result of good and bad instincts, 
placed in us by God himself for our punish- 
ment or perfection. Bad human laws, which 
always oppose, in all things, the will of nature 
and the designs of Providence, often make an 
inspiration of God a crime, and curse the senti- 
ments he has blessed, while they sanction in- 
famous unions (even legal ones), and do honor 



82 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

to those who live beneath the reign of their base 
instincts— base as hades, false as untruth, al 
though hedged about by law and panoplied in 
custom and upheld by the church. 

It remains for true statesman and legisla- 
tors, to distinguish as much as possible, legiti- 
mate, because natural and true, love from a 
\ ain and guilty passion : For all true marriage 
is loving consent, and so should be pronounced 
in the name of a higher, purer, and more gen- 
erous law than that which the civilized world 
has upon its statute books today. 

"The rights of a brother and lover are dif- 
ferent. Those of a lover and husband are iden- 
tical; unless the husband consents to become a 
brother, in which case the law of marriage 
would be violated in its most mysterious, inti- 
mate, and sacred relation. The divorce would 
be perfect; the woman be no longer bound, and 
the rights of her lover and herself fall into their 
proper places. Hence every man who fails to 
husband his wife, but only brothers her, has no 
claim whatever upon her wifehood or wifely 
offices ; but from that moment her lover unques- 
tionably has; for the brotherly relation is based 
on brain and mind ; the other upon heart solely, 
and heart, not mind, carries sex along with it. 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 83 

Nothing is more true than that when two souls 
yield and become bound to each other, their 
mutual possession becomes sacred, and as much 
a divine right as individual liberty ; ior God 
himself inspires them, by the miracle of love, 
with all true human virtue, power and faith 
in each other; which union no man, no human 
law, can rend or dissever. Out, then, on mere 
formalism, gross laws, and impious oaths. God 
sanctifies the wedding, and will keep up the 
miracle, and the twain will demonstrate the 
glory of fidelity, and the sublime meaning of 
the words, Honor, Love, and Marriage, without 
,a legal ring to bind them, or a social whip to 
keep them in the traces : Ceremonial marriage 
is a profanation to hearts that really love. An- 
nounce such marriage publicly, but ask no leave 
or license of priest or justice— ask it only of 
your souls and God. Such a marriage will 
develop its divinest joys. Its ideal realized is 
triplicate— Love, Faith, Eternity, and no human 
soul can scale the battlements of thought and 
heaven, like one winged and plumed with such 
a love— one in which physical passion is as a 
cobble-stone to a frowning mountain— a side- 
hill brooklet to the roaring sea ; nor can it ever 
reach the crown of its lucidity and power so 



84 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

certainly as from the enthusiasm of a mighty 
love like this; for it is an ever-present revela- 
tion of the God, a manifestation of his divine 
presence, in and near the soul, kindling up 
flames too white and pure for wicked eyes ; joys 
too vast for the sensualist's power of conceptive 
thought: Why, as the subject unfolds before 
the soul, it seems to me no man before has ever 
written of it, and that the height, and depth, 
and breadth thereof never hath been fathomed, 
nor a tithe of the wonderful story ever yet been 
told. God, how small the world looks ; how piti- 
ful and mean the ologies and ologists in this 
blessed light of love. 

i 'And I say these things from my soul, be- 
cause they are true. They may not be popular, 
yet are immortal; uttered in spite of the " pub- 
lic,' ' which is ever fickle, forgetful, cruel, and 
unjust— I know it well, and yet say these things. 
What are parties but plunder, and what are 
creeds but solemn amusements. The strong sou] 
stands unawed by threats, unbought by bribes 
I think my soul is strong. In renouncing human 
compassion and despising human glory, the 
true soul feels the influx of celestial aid. I think 
my soul is true. Death is bitter to the unjust. 
I am not afraid to die, because the devil is a 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 85 

chimera; hell a poetic fable: God, Love, and 
Immortality alone are true; hence let us laugh 
at Pagan errors, even though disguised in Chris- 
tian garb." 

Not so very long ago, one E. F. Boyd, hail- 
ing from Minnesota, issued a circular concern- 
ing true marriage. This was reprinted in the 
book: "The Master Passion," by Dr. P. B. 
Randolph. I believe that all, or nearly all true 
Spiritualists will agree with what Mr. Boyd 
says, and I would call the attention of the church 
and churchmen to this part and what has been 
.said before concerning true marriage and chal- 
lenge them to show wherein we err, or wherein 
we are at variance with the laws of God and 
Nature. 

"Proposition 1. A true social science cannot 
be reared upon a material basis (namely ,upon 
property, industry, capital). Mere material in- 
terests, although primary when considered as 
conditions of life, are but secondary when con- 
sidered in relation to mora-1 principles. All 
true sociology must be based upon a moral or 
religious foundation. 

"Ideals (moral or religious principles) 
adopted as axioms must constitute the animus, 
or directing power, of a true social order. 



86 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

"No. 2. The reconstruction of human na- 
ture is an idle dream; a theological chimera; 
a natural impossibility. Man, in the constitu- 
ent elements of his being, is absolutely perfect. 
"The image of God." 

"The lowest principles in Man's nature are 
as indispensable to his existence and happiness 
as are the highest. The foundations cannot be 
removed Without destruction to the whole 
fabric. Self-love, sexual love, and parental 
love, are each as necessary to complete and per- 
fect the human soul, and are as divine as the 
highest faculties of the mind or heart. To 
meditate and deliberately plot the eradication 
and extinguishment of these basic elements of 
man 's being is not only self -destructive and sui- 
cidal, but sacrilegious, sublimely pious, and 
blasphemous. 

" 'Call thou not unclean, untamable, or 
wicked, anything which the Lord God hath 
made/ " 

Before going further with the subject in 
hand, I think it well to add the following, as 
the followers of churchanity are constantly de- 
ciying the passions of man, not knowing what 
they are really talking about, and still less know- 
ing that the passions are so closely associated 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 87 

with the soul of man, that they cannot be parted 
from each other, without destroying both. "It 
has become quite fashionable of late to hear 
people loudly decrying the passions, especially 
the sexual; but when I hear that sort of stuff 
and twaddle, and hear man compared to the 
fi animals," I set it down as morally certain 
that there's a very dirty corner in the de- 
nouncer's mind, and the chances are that such 
a man is a debauchee every inch of him, and 
such a female a harlot in grain, and uncoi- 
scionable vampire in practice. The fault of to- 
day is that 

We give our appetites too loose a rein- — 
Push every pleasure to the verge of pain, 

"Common sense, backed by common hon- 
esty (which is very uncommon at the present 
time), will correct all this. Now, we are all 
more or less diseased, physically, mentally, mor- 
ally, passionally. Free love is a sort of ulcer 
afflicting the body politic, brothels are the can- 
cers, divorce courts the hospital, wherein the 
remedy is often worse than the original disease. 
It will not be so in the good time coming— and 
very close at hand, let us hope. 



88 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

" Today there are many thousands who re- 
ject the idea of hereditary depravity, because 
it is a monstrous doctrine viewed in one light, 
and had nothing to favor it but some old Jews ' 
fables, and yet these same persons speak of pas . 
sions as of some devouring pestilential leprosy 
in the human heart. They are, at the same time, 
both right and wrong, for so far as theology 
is concerned, it is as false as falsehood, but 
physiologically and psychologically, as true as 
Truth herself. 

"Political economists think we should have 
the right kind of a world at last, if we cut all 
the passions out of man. They would extinguish 
every vestige of fire, even that which warms 
and cheers us, and which cooks our food, simply, 
forsooth, because village pumpkins make silly 
bonfires in honor of some little lordling, whose 
only praise is that he is a greater scoundrel 
than the masses have among them; or because 
silly boys on the Fourth of July burn their fin- 
gers with gun-powder; or that cities are some- 
times devastated with conflagrations. Fire is 
to me sacred; I almost worship it, because it is 
the type and essence of Purity herself. These 
men would emasculate the race and make us 
all eunuchs in theory and practice. Thank 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 89 

Heaven we are not all content with tapioca, but 
have now and then a relish for more solid food, J 
and relish Common Sense. Uncommon sense ice- 
should say. 

"Nothing so alike as peas; nothing so nat- 
ural as the family if love is there, and nations 
are but the family developed. Consequently, 
so long as one man loves one woman— and he 
can fully love no more at the same time— there 
will be the family. It will forever love its own 
members better than its neighbor, and there 
will be nations just as long; and patriotism 
alone will be the tie which binds the mass to- 
gether. 

"This is simple common sense, and it follows 
that the harum-scarum Utopian schemes of pas- 
sion-fired "Foolosophers" and social communi- 
ties—as isolated from the world as the angels 
from the fabled burning pit— must ever and 
necessarily fail on the basis of the love man 
must bear to his wife, and she to their mutual- 
ities. No isolated socialism can eventually suc- 
ceed, because oranges won't grow on the polar 
shores; and man must spontaneously coalesce 
with man, else there can be no real unity. The 
tendency of man is toward self-government, or 
the essence of the self -hood. Every man wants 



90 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

to have his talk, his say, his finger in the pie; 
''too many cooks spoil the broth," and hence, 
after a few brief years, these premature so- 
cieties fail, and their forlorn leaders rub their 
eyes, wonder how it came so, exclaim, "Who'd 
'a thought it!" pass from the stage, and give 
place to other visionaries. They failed to see 
that which was right beneath their noses,namely, 
the fact that as knowledge increased the senti- 
ment of personalism gained strength, and with 
it the desire of spontaneity and repugnance to 
artificialism of whatever kind, under whatever 
name; individual manhood and slavery to even 
the most liberal doctrines are incompatible with 
each other; and discordant notes must they be 
that issue from such an instrument." 

"Thus has it been in the past, thus is it in 
the present, and ever will be, until men cease to 
make laws for others, but learn to look at home, 
and by assiduity learn to remedy the defects 
there. The best piece of advice ever given was 
that which says : First remove the beam from 
thine own eye, and then pluck the mote from 
out thy brother's." f 

"No. 3. Sexology, a true philosophy thereof 
is the natural and only true basis of social 
ethics, and therefore of universal advancement 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 91 

and reform. Abstract rights are inherent in 
the soul or internal consciousness, and are inde- 
pendent of sexism, excepting that it tones and 
governs the individual in his or her recognition 
or apprehension of these inherent rights, and 
thus becomes the true basis of sociology, or 
guiding law of our nature and actions, respect- 
ing our appreciation and enjoyment of these 
lights. Hence, the political rights of females 
are just as real, as sacred, and as momentous 
as the rights of males. So long as political 
powers usurp private and domestic rights will 
women need, and they should have, equal po- 
litical rights with men. Men can never have 
even their own individual rights fully and com- 
pletely recognized and guaranteed by men alone. 
Such can only be attained through the goodness, 
and suffrage and help of woman. Besides, hu- 
man happiness and peace are a "mere impos- 
sibility" so long as one-half the race believes 
themselves underrated, unappreciated, and un- 
justly dealt with by the other. The equal poli- 
tical rights of the sexes is the only road to uni- 
versal peace. Apply the golden rule. Why 
not, good Christians, practice what you preach? 
Why not, ye Christian voters, show your faith 
—in the golden rule— by your works? 



92 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

"No. 4. .Moral responsibility presupposes; 
freedom of action. Coercion terminates moral 
^accountability. Therefore without individual 
freedom there can be no individual moral re- 
sponsibility in relation to practice. 

"No. 5. Freedom being an inalienable right 
of every accountable individual, it follows as a 
logical consequence that all coercive systems, 
theological and legal, not imperatively de- 
manded by the known truths of science, are in 
conflict with true social order and ethics, and 
an unjust usurpation of individual rights, and 
therefore not morally binding on those thereby 
aggrieved. 

"All matrimonial evils, violations, and 
t rimes are, in a great degree, excusable on these 
grounds, namely, the deprivation of natural 
rights and personal prerogatives. 

"No. 6. i There is one only and true mar- 
riage, ' and that consists in the union of internal 
and temperamental congenialities and counter- 
parts. The true marriage, which is of the 
spirit, and pure, is forever beyond the power 
ol legislative action to create. True marriage 
is dual, exclusive, and perpetual by the free 
choice and mutual desire of the parties thereto. 
Their mutual fidelity is instinctive. 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 93 

"No. 7. Every other marital relation than 
the true marriage is provisional, temporal, ex- 
perimental, imperfect, and transitory, but at the 
same time necessary, when guided by wisdom 
and justice, to the attainment of, or in the ab- 
sence of the true marriage. 

"Mankind being of an endless variety in their 
physical and marital needs, temperamental re- 
quirements and inward aspirations, no single 
rule of rectitude and morality can be made the 
' law' for all, except in the usurpation by the 
strong of the rights of the weak, or the practical 
recognition of the dogma that ' might makes 
right.' All statutory laws inhibiting or enjoin- 
ing either celibacy, marriage, or divorce, mon- 
ogamy, bigamy, or polygamy, are in defiance of 
nature's laws of amative and marital manifes- 
tation, a perpetual curse to the commonwealths 
usurping such control, and must work their ulti- 
mate dissolution and overthrow. 

"No. 8. Every man and woman has an inal- 
ienable right to seek and attain, if possible, the 
true conjugal union of soul with soul. Legisla- 
tion should rather aid, than seek to frustrate, 
such a social consummation. Bigamies are only 
a proof of false prior unions. Legislative laws 
do not punish the false unions, but do punish, 



94 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

with savage malignity and injustice, him 
( though not her) who, abandoning the false, at- 
tempts to form a truer union. Conventional 
society, through the operation of its legislative 
enactmentments, arbitrarily and despotically 
governs all persons in their marital affairs, ut- 
terly regardless of their individual consent, and 
of their most sacred and private rights. Al- 
though usurping the rights of individuals, and 
ruthlessly coercing an abject obedience to its 
arrogated authority, it nevertheless invariably 
shirks the responsibility of the acts of those 
whom it thus robs of their private rights, and 
unjustly holds each individual to be morally, 
socially, and legally responsible for whatsoever 
sexual misfortunes, frailties, temptations, tres- 
passes, mistakes, violations, woes, wars, and 
crimes await them, which, under such a barbar- 
ous system of laws, it is impossible for human 
wisdom and foresight to anticipate or avert. 
What can be expected from such unnatural un- 
righteous, ungodly, institutions, but just that 
which society everywhere presents, namely, 
sexual and matrimonial perversions, misde- 
meanors and diabolism of every name and 
grade. Besides the propagation of natural- 
born criminals, foes to human good, and all, too, 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 95 

in the name, and under pretense of i religion 
and justice.' 

" ' Whatsoever ye sow that shall ye also 
reap. ' 

"No. 9, No possible relation can invest in 
cue person the absolute ownership of another. 

"No. 10. Nature comprehends all science, 
and is the only Mailable word of God. Reason 
embraces all ideas, and is man's only trust- 
worthy guide. Hence nature and reason con- 
stitute the tribune before which all questions 
must be brought for solution. 

"The above ideas admit of the widest appli- 
cation, and the most varied relations. They do 
not enjoin, nor prohibit either marriage or celi- 
bacy, monogamy nor polygamy, divorcement 
nor marital perpetuity, neither ' exelusiveness ? 
nor i variety' as sexual 'laws,' but ever recogniz- 
ing the central idea of the true marriage to be 
the guiding star of conjugal love, regard each 
and every phase of sexualism to be subordinate 
to that idea as a governing law. True marriasre 
simply means the strongest, most inseparable 
and irresistible of any human attraction. The 
science of chemistry furnishes a philosophical 
sexology, namely, the law of indwelling simili- 
tudes. 



96 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

"To the question, 'Do you blieve in, or ad- 
vocate free love?' no reply can me made unless 
the inquiries define what they mean by that 
term. It seems to be vulgarly used as synony- 
mous with prostitution. It is hardly necessary 
to say, ^ that the leading doctrine in the above 
platform being that of true marriage, nothing 
can be farther removed from its aim and de- 
sign, than that ' social evil, ' or anything tending 
to increase or encourage it. I would proclaim 
the gospel of true marriage, and advocate its 
attainment. 

"The philosophical philanthropist sees no 
hope for the social and moral elevation of the 
masses, under the false institutions that now 
deform society. To educate the race up to moral 
purity is an impossibility. Besides, education 
is not morality. ' Knowledge does not save the 
soul; but obedience to Nature's laws alone will 
save. Sexual laws form no exception. Of nat- 
ural laws God and nature teach this everlasting 
gospel: 'Believe (or obey) and ye shall be 
saved, believe (or obey) not, and ye shall be 
damned. ' " 

There is but one way to correct these evils, 
and that is : 

1st. That when a man and a woman truly 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 97 

love each other, the laws shall recognize it as a 
legal marriage, and deal with it as such. 

2d. That when two people who are thus, or 
any other way married and cannot agree, and 
live a reasonable and happy life, and bring up 
children as they should, the courts shall grant 
them each their freedom without a trial and red- 
tape, and let them part in peace. 

3d. That if a man associated with any 
woman, and betray her in any way, or on any 
promise, that the court will recognize it as a 
legal marriage, and if a child be the result of 
such intercourse, that the law recognize it as a 
legal child, and him as the legal and legitimate 
father, and if he will not live with the woman, 
force him to provide for the woman and the 
child, and allow the name of the father to the 
child. 

In this way, and in this way only, can the 
crimes that are now committed, be prevented, 
and no more so-called, by the church, illegiti- 
mate children be born. For in fact, there are no 
such things as illegitimate children, for all chil- 
dren are of father and mother, why defame 
them for that which they could not help f Priest- 
hood and the institution of marriage as it is to- 
day, is the cause of abortion and discontent; 



98 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

abortion and discontent are the mother and 
iather of all crime. Let us abolish them. 

' ' G od does not trouble himself about whether 
Molly's child was born before being commis- 
sioned properly by the Rev. Dr. So and So in 
a surplice or after; but whether the child can 
eat his allowance and turn it into good quantity 
and quality of clear brain. He does not care 
whether John marries Sally, but that each shall 
marry some body and soul; for tfre earth, and 
air, and sunshine, and matter were all specially 
destined as nurseries of the incarnate God, by 
the viewless chief of all existence, and as it 
happens that every particle and atom has life, 
and force, and power, and destiny, in exact 
ratio with the subtlety and fineness of itself, it 
follows that any aggregation thereof must also 
have a determinate destiny by reason of size, 
shape, fineness, etc., of the constituent atoms, 
and one and all, as chemical existences, act just 
as their organizations vote they shall, acting in 
concert with the tremendous concourse of 
eternal forces that forever play upon them in 
myriad ways, alternately changing the vanish- 
ing and accreting quantities and tendencies. 
God today, devil yesterday, a mixture of both 
tomorrow, resulting in crystallizing all that 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 99 

is good and purging away the bad, whether 
physical, mental, or moral, for as God is the 
spirit of push, he pushes all to the better ends, 
and as speedily as possible gets us out of the 
cellars of life into its drawing-rooms and par- 
lors. As all these things take place through 
the law of evolution, no ceremonies of priests 
are needed. God does all things well, and 
Churchanity never yet did any good, nor will 
it ever do any. 

Mr. Roberts desires to tell us, and would 
make us believe, that abortion was one of the 
results of Spiritualism. This is possibly one 
of the greatest falsehoods, and most untruthful 
statements that he has ever made. Abortion 
is the direct result of modern Churchanity and 
its doctrine of "Justification by Faith." This 
doctrine is, as Dr. Randolph said, "A sun- 
greened carcass, a bog, and its loathsomeness 
offends the sense of all honest men. ' ' In Orien- 
tal countries, where modern Christianity, or 
Churchanity, is as yet unknown, and where 
people follow natural instincts and intuition, 
where the modern faith or doctrine of "Justi- 
fication by Faith," is as yet unknown, and men 
believe in the "Law of Karma/ ' which was also 
taught by Christ, when he said: "As thou 

l ore. 



100 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

soweth, so shalt thou reap : ■ ' in these countries, 
which we of civilization call heathen and unciv- 
ilized, this foul crime known as abortion, or foet- 
icide, is almost unknown, and there are but very 
few other crimes committed there. The reason 
for this is plain— the people of those so-called 
heathen nations believe in a God; perhaps not 
just as we do, but nevertheless they believe in 
a God ; their God is a just God, and they believe 
that if they commit a wrong that their God 
will punish them for it; they do not believe as 
modern priestcraft teaches, that a man can com- 
mit as grievous deeds as he wishes, and then go 
asid ask God for forgiveness and be forgiven 
and not have to suffer for so doing, as we Chris- 
tians, or Churchmen of America are taught by 
the clergy, who care very little for our souls so 
long as they get a good, easy living. But while 
these people may worship an idol, as we call it, 
yet they believe that the God that they worship 
is a just God, and that if they do wrong that 
iliey must suffer for it. Believing thus, they 
are careful of what they do. Although they 
have never seen our Bible, yet they believe the 
words that the Christ said: "As thou soweth, 
so shalt thou reap." They live not by educa- 
tion, but by that grander faculty of the human 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 101 

soul— intuition, that faculty, which we in Amer- 
ica have lost through so-called civilization and 
Christianity. The women do not care for 
Church and society, therefore they are naturat, 
and when they approach motherhood, they 
thank their God, because they think it a blessing 
to be fruitful; and instead of committing the 
ioul crime, that is daily committed throughout 
civilization, they let their children be born as 
they should be, and the consequences are, that 
the children are not born vuth the«r brains lilled 
with the seeds of murder, and other crimes. 
Here in America, where the Christian faith 
abounds, where every family has the Bible 
wherein it says: "Be thou fruitful and re- 
plenish the earth:" where we go to church; 
send out missionaries to convert these heath- 
ens (!) ; here in civilized America, it is getting 
to be a shame for a woman to have children, 
and she is looked at by the noble followers of 
Church and Society as being unnatural , and 
while she may be a Christian, she dares not do 
as the Christ whom they profess to so nobly fol- 
low, taught; and if she wishes to associate with 
these clean things, Society and Church, she 
dares not be plagued with children. There is 
then but one way open to her and that way 



7 I 



102 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

is abortion, the crime of hell and the destroyer 
of souls, and the breeder of all the crimes that 
civilization is cursed with. 

On a slip of paper that I recently picked up, 
I find the following, which is very true as all 
travelers testify to the truth of it. "Beginning 
with Venice and traveling westward on the 
northern shores along the entire coast the morals 
of the women and men are not surpassed by 
those of any land on earth, excepting only the 
Celtic portions of Ireland. The twin cancers 
of the social structure elsewhere foeticide and 
divorce are unknown on the northwestern 
Mediterranean shores. And if you will follow 
those people to this country where you will find 
the same conditions present themselves, I will 
venture to compare any given portion of the 
population of Philadelphia's little Italy with 
any equal number of the inhabitants of our 
fashionable apartment houses and hotels from 
a moral viewpoint to- the infinite disadvantage 
of the latter. These facts are so glaring, so 
ubiquitous they cry out with such trumpet- 
throated voices as to arrest the attention of our 
chief executive." 

I do not know who the author is, and am 
therefore unable to give him the credit that he 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 103 

deserves, but nothing truer has ever been writ- 
ten by any one. 

Many who have heard me speak on the sub- 
ject, or mayhaps have read the booklet, i ' Abor- 
tion a Crime, and the Cause of Crime/ ' have 
said to me : ' * I admit that this is a crime, but 
how can it be the cause of crime V To which 
I answer: " There is not a scientist in the 
world, that does not acknowledge the powerful 
influence of Maternal Impressions on the child, 
if feticide is successful, of course, there can be 
no criminal born then, but in about 60 per cent 
of the cases where this is tried, it proves to be 
unsuccessful. The mind of the mother is made 
up to accomplish certain ends, she believes that 
she will accomplish these results, and these 
thoughts of red-handed murder are impressed 
with a double force on the unborn child. Con- 
trary to her expectations, she does not succeed 
in her intentions, and the result is— a criminal 
and no law under the sun can make anything 
else of the child. Again, in other cases, the ob- 
ject sought for is accomplished, but that woman 
can never bring forth an honest child, the soul 
of the woman is affected, and she can no more 
have an honest child, than can a white woman 
have a pure-white child after she has once had 



104 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

a child by a negro father. It is impossible, both 
the soul and the blood is tainted, and will stay 
tainted throughout eternity. This is the sin that 
will kill the soul, there is but one other sin be- 
sides this, that will do this, and that is Sodom- 
ism. These are the only two sins whereby the 
soul can be killed. "The soul that sinneth, it 
shall die." These are not sins as we usually 
understand sin, but they are sins of the soul. 

This is the cause of nearly all, if not all, the 
crimes of the civilized world. Before foeticide 
was practiced, crime was almost unknown, but 
as Churchi sm, with its doctrine of ' ' Justification 
by Faith 1 ' advanced and the people became wise 
in the sciences of not having any children, crime 
advanced with the church. The laws of all civ- 
ilized nations deal with the wrong criminal. The 
real criminal is the one that implants the seeds 
of crime in the mind and soul of the yet unborn 
babe, and she and the physician (God save the 
mark) are the ones to be punished. Foeticide 
should be made a crime punishable by death, and 
the ethics of medicine should be so changed that 
it would be a crime. As it is at this time, a phy- 
sician or patient can commit crime, and another 
physician dares not inform against them. 

Abortion is a crime any time between 24 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 105 

hours after conception until the time the child 
should be naturally born. Not only does it ruin* 
the body and mind and implant the seeds of 
crime in those who do it, but it destroys the soul 
as well, and no amount of praying will save 
that soul from total destruction, no matter what 
Priestcraft may say; and I defy them to prove 
to me that a person that kills his or her soul can 
enter heaven, as the Bible teaches. 

I say without fear, that the cause of this 
and other crimes is the teachings of modern 
Christianity or Churchism. If they, the clergy, 
would teach as Christ taught, when he said: 
" As thou soweth, so shalt thou reap," then there 
would be far less of this soul killing crime and 
therefore less of other crime; but with their 
teachings of "Justification by Faith/ ' the world 
must continue to go down; and why not? Why 
should a man or woman care for anyone else? 
Why should they not enjoy themselves, even if 
a child must be killed, or the bread taken out 
of another's mouth, knowing that all they need 
to do, is to ask for forgiveness at the last moment 
and all will be well, and they can live happy 
ever after, in the Heaven of the blessed. 

Why should I care for another and suffer 
and go hungry, when I can kill another, ruin an 



106 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

innocent girl, steal another's hard earned 
money, and enjoy myself, and go to Heaven, 
anyhow? Surely there is no need of me doing 
so. I say again, that it is the teachings of mod- 
ern Churchism; which cares not for souls, but 
for the money that is in it, that this crime can 
exist, and in turn, it is the cause of many of the 
other crimes. 

Spiritualists do not, and cannot believe in the 
Doctrine of "Justification by Faith," but they 
do believe in the Law of Karma and in the teach- 
ings of Christ, when He said : "As thou soweth, 
so shalt thou reap. ' ' Believing thus, and know- 
ing many of the secrets of the Spirit World, 
they cannot be a party to this crime, and the 
accusation is therefore absolutely false, and has 
not a shred of truth in it. 

Dr. Randolph saw the results of this crime, 
and says: "In all our large cities there are a 
score of shameless wretches, vile abortionists, 
male and female, in my opinion fit candidates 
for the gyves or gallows, who flaunt their 
dreadful trade of child-destroying barefacedly 
to the world; who advertise liberally in the 
public journals, informing people where they can 
get murder done at so much per head,— a ter- 
rible state of things, but legitimately growing 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 107 

out of popular demand, arising from popular 
hypocrisy, which seems to hold that a bastard 
is not fit to live, and therefore should be hurried 
into, and out of, the world as soon as possible. 
And yet, not one half the murdered innocents 
are such; for if we can believe scores of family 
physicians, ten married women resort to it, 
where one poor deceived girl is forced to, wholly 
unconscious of the dreadful enormity of her 
offense. And yet even a bastard is the handi- 
work of the Eternal God. Why not, then, permit 
them to be born, even though the mothers pass 
shamefacedly through the world. Legislators, 
in God's name, I implore you to establish 
Foundling Hospitals for these unfortunates. It 
will not be putting premium on crime, but it will 
prevent many a suicide, and save thousands of 
human beings who are now being ruthlessly 
butchered, that abortion-brokers may fatten in 
the land. Murder, sirs, I tell you that red- 
handed Murder is abroad in the land, and his 
victims are the Innocents. It is the fashionable 
crime, alike resorted to by women in and out of 
wedlock,— of all classes, from the public layman 
on the highway, to My Lady Gay, and the poor 
girl who has loved, not wisely, but too well. Oh, 
all good people, let us try to prevent this tide of 



108 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

crime from submerging our country,— you in 
your way, I in mine. We are all journeying 
to the Land beyond the Shadow. Let us do 
something worthy ere we go." 

Dr. Randolph was a Spiritualist, and made 
this plea for a yet unborn humanity. Does it 
look as though Spiritualists sanctioned this 
crime? I thmk not I have the testimony from 
a physician now practicing in Minneapolis, 
Minn., that within one year, more than 200 
women, married and single, have appealed to 
him to commit this crime in order to save them 
either dishonor in the case of single women, and 
''avoid having kids" in cases where they were 
married. He tells me that all of these women 
professed to be Christians, and in very many 
cases, the plea was based on this fact, and they 
did not want to be dishonored. Just think of it : 
saving one's honor by committing a crime. Yet, 
such is modern Churchanity, and then they try 
to tell us that this crime is sanctioned by Spirit- 
ualists. 

Foundling Hospitals would do an immense 
amount of good in cases where young girls are 
betrayed, by things that call themselves men. 
But as this crime is committed by married 
women ten times oftener than by single ones, 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 109 

nothing could be done for these. The trouble 
today is, that women care a great deal more for 
their little, loving ( !) pug dogs, than they care 
for either babies or their husbands. But recently 
a man in Chicago was granted a divorce because 
his wife loved a bull-dog more than she did him, 
and insisted on having the dog sleep in their bed, 
When the husband protested, she spat in his 
face, dared him to strike her, and declared she 
would kiss the undertaker when he died— which 
she prayed God would be soon. Judge Wate- 
man granted the divorce after this little pre- 
liminary : 

"You say," said the Judge to the woman, 
"you love the dog more than you do your hus- 
band ?" "Yes, and this is because the dog is 
much more lovable than the man," answered 
the lady (?) in half -apology, pulling on her lace 
handkerchief. "Then I'll not divorce you from 
the dog. You may live with him forever, but 
we will just enter a decree in favor of the man. 
And I would like to here announce that any man 
in Illinois who has a wife that loves a dog more 
than she does him, can get quick relief in this 
court. ' ' 

This is the morality that the Church teaches 
at this time. A woman can have, hug, and kiss 



110 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

as many dogs as she wishes, and it is all right, 
it belongs to Society, but to have a baby is a dis- 
grace, especially if she already is the mother 
of one. I have nothing to say against dogs, I 
like them, but they have their place, and that 
place is not in the arms, or bed, of any woman 
with a spark of womanhood within her soul. 

Mr. Roberts then tells us, that: " Since 
about 1830, when the devil sprung the soul-de- 
stroying trap, called Spiritualism, into active 
work through the Fox Sisters, its baleful in- 
fluence has become world-wide. And today it 
stands a rival to Roman Catholicism and Prot- 
estantism as an infernal machine. Its victims 
are numbered by the hundreds of thousands, 
ves, bv the millions. ' ' 

I can best answer this by quoting from the 
work entitled: "All about the Devil/ ' by the 
Rev. Moses Hull, in which he says: If the 
Church has been a proper judge there has never 
been a reformer in the world who has not in 
some way been connected with the devil. The 
Church has always claimed authority to judge 
for the world it now claims ; it was, in past ages, 
thought to be more nearly infallible than it is 
today. Hell has been the grand store-house of 
reforms and the rendezvous of reformers. Ref- 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 111 

erence to a few of the most common historical 
facts will prove this. 

"John the Baptist and Jesus were both ac- 
cused of being in league with the devil. Of John 
they said : ' ' Behold he hath a devil. ' ' 

They said of Jesus : * i Thou art a Samaritan 
and hast a devil. ' ' They said : "He casteth not 
out devils but by Beelzebub, the prince of 
devils." To those who were led away by his 
doctrine, they said: "Why hear ye him, he 
hath a devil?" 

Thus, according to the consensus of the pop- 
ular Church of their day John and Jesus each 
had some mysterious connection with the deviL 
But the Church today will acknowledge that, 
devil or no devil, John and Jesus were in the 
right and the Church in the wrong; and what- 
ever their practice may be, they will profess 
to be followers of those accused of being under 
the influence of devils rather than to be the legi- 
timate descendants of their accusers. Human 
nature is strangely contradictory, no matter 
where we find it, and when so-called Christians, 
who are really fanatics, come to tell us what the 
devil is, and what his works are, they usually 
contradict themselves, and tell us that the devil 
does God's work, while God must be doing the 



112 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

Devil's work. "Oh, consistency, thou art a 
jewel. J \ 

If the Church is infallible John and Jesus 
did their work by the power of devils ; but if the 
Church made a mistake then I will consider that 
it is liable to err, and will look as often as twice 
before I shall conclude that the devil is in Spirit- 
ualism, on the mere ipse dixit of pulpit igno- 
ramuses. 

Edward C. Towne tells us in his "Exam- 
iner," that: Five thousand children under the 
age of five years, were put to death by the Cath- 
olic Church for being emissaries of the devil. If 
a child manifested any precocity in any peculiar 
direction it was supposed the devil was operat- 
ing through the child as he did through the 
snake in the garden, and the child was put to 
death. ' ' Isn 't this a nice record for the Church 
to cherish, and hold dear to its heart, as a proof 
of the glorious work done by it in the past? 
Surely Spiritualism has as yet, not smeared its 
hands by such devilish work and the blood of 
the innocent- 
Giles Corey, of Salem witchcraft fame, on 
two occasions manifested wonderful feats of 
physical strength; this was proof to Cotton 
Mather, Sir Mathew Hale, and others that he 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 113 

was a wizard, possessed of the devil, and the 
was pressed to death. 

Let the church look back to the hellish out- 
rages committed in, or at Salem, and think what 
unutterable and ghastly crimes were then com- 
mitted by fanatics in the name of Christianity. 
I have no doubt but that Mather, Hael, and oth 
ers are now in Heaven enjoying themselves as a 
reward for their faithful work for the Lord God, 
while Corey and the hundreds of other innocent 
victims are getting a taste of Churchanity *s hell- 
fire. I think that Churchmen should take a warn- 
ing from these things and not fall into the same 
error, but they are doing the same thing today 
against\Spiritualism, Mysticism, and Occultism^) 
as the Satem murderers did against the so-called 
witches at that time. The only difference is, that 
they can only deal out mental suffering to the 
Spiritualists and Mystics, while the Salem butch- 
eries dealt out death and physical suffering. 
And yet, I believe, that when the two are com- 
pared, mental suffering is much more terrible 
than any pain that can be inflicted upon the 
body. 

When the common flesh fork was invented it 
was bitterly denounced by the clergy, so also was 
the f anning-mill, which separates the chaff from 



114 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

the wheat, when invented by an old Scotchman. 

When Fulton invented the steamboat, the 
Church everywhere prophesied against it; it 
would not work ; or, if it did, it was an insult to 
Almighty God, and the work of the devil to run 
a boat against God's wind and tide. The clergy 
have about gotten over the idea of calling in- 
ventions works of the devil, and as those things 
cannot take their jobs, they do not care even if 
they were the works of their Satanic Majesty. 
When a system comes up that may rival Church- 
ism, then it is, that their soft spot is touched, 
and they are as bad as some so-called ' i regular ' ' 
physicians, when a system of healing is started 
up. There is sure to be * i something doing. ' ' 

Andrew D. White tells us that : ' ' When Gal- 
ileo had discovered the four satellites of Jupi- 
ter, the whole thing was denounced as impossible 
and impious. It was argued that the Bible 
clearly showed, by all applicable types, that 
there could be only seven planets; that this 
was proved by the seven golden candlesticks of 
the Apocalypse, and by the seven-branched 
candlesticks of the tabernacle, and by the 
seven churches of Asia. Mathematical and 
other reasonings were met by the words of 
Scripture. 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 115 

It was declared that Galileo 's doctrine was 
proved false by the standing still of the sun for 
Joshua ; by the declaration that the foundations 
of the earth are fixed so firm that they cannot 
be moved ; and that the sun runneth about from 
one end of heaven to the other.' ' , 

While Luther, in Protestant Wittenberg, was 
preaching against Galileo, the Dominican Father 
at Rome, Caccini, was issuing his invectives from 
Rome. He preached on the text, "Why stand 
ye gazing up into Heaven ? ' ' In this sermon, he 
insisted that geometry is of the devil ; and that 
mathematicians should be banished as the 
authors of all heresies. " 

"For the final assault, the park of heavy 
artillery was at last wheeled into place. You 
see it in all the scientific battlefields. It consists 
of general denunciation. It was brought to bear 
on Galileo with this declaration. 

The opinion of the earth's motion, is, of all 
heresies, the most abominable, the most per- 
nicious, the most scandalous. The immobility, 
of the earth is thrice sacred. The argument 
against the immortality of the soul, the creator, 
the incarnation, etc., should be tolerated sooner 
than an argument to prove that the earth 
moves. ' ' 



116 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

Galileo urged his accusers to look through his 
telescope and be convinced, but they refused. 
One Calvious declared that the devil had enabled 
Galileo to invent an instrument to distort man 's 
vision and make things appear as they were not. 
This was on a par with some of the accusations 
of some of the Salem witches, and also, with the 
accusations made today, by the clergy, through- 
out the world, against Spiritualism, Mysticism, 
and Occultism. There is no difference in these 
accusations, they all come from poor, deluded, 
ignorant fools, who are really more to be pitied 
for their ignorance, than to be condemned. 

Poor Galileo was imprisoned and abused al- 
most beyond description for his heresy, and 
finally compelled to get down on his knees be- 
fore church authority and say : 

"I, Galileo, being in my seventieth year, be- 
ing a prisoner, and on my knees, and before 
your eminences (?), having before my eyes the 
holy gospel, which I touch with my hands, 
adjure, curse and detest the heresy of the move- 
ment of the earth.' * 

The devil, Galileo and science were right. 
God, the Bible and the Church were wrong, as 
usual. But no, God ivas not wrong, it was these 
poor deluded fools who thought that they knew 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 117 

the very will and desire of God, who wrongly 
interpreted His Word, through their ignorant 
fanaticism, that were wrong. God is ever the 
same, today, tomorrow, and throughout etern- 
ity. Man misunderstands and blames God for 
his ignorance, when an opportunity is held out 
to him to get Wisdom, he refuses it, because he 
desires to remain ignorant. 

Was the Church ever right in giving the 
devil credit for something that he really did do ? 
Yes, yes, yes. I am willing to allow that for 
once they were right. When Thomas Jenner 
accidentally discovered that vaccination took the 
deadly sting of small-pox ( ?), he was denounced 
in long printed statements as having formed a 
partnership with the devil to turn man back to 
the genus quadrumane. In this the Church was 
right, for never, in the history of man, has u 
more foul and deadly system of child-murder 
been instituted, and shame to the times, it is kept 
up today as never before. Throughout the world, 
the cries of murdered children raise to Heaven 
in one wail of anguish, but there is no letting up 
to it. Instead of getting more sense, the doctors 
are now forcing it upon people by a damnable 
law, and the Church, ever the champion of 
wrong, stands by them, and helps them in mur- 

8 I 



118 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

dering men, women, and children. For once the 
Church was right, and now they stand by the 
very works of the devil, although the greatest 
scientists of this age and past centuries have 
proved beyond a doubt, that Vaccination is a 
curse to humanity, and the most effective system 
of child-murder ever instituted. 

Jenner himself saw the inefficiency of vac- 
cination, and freely admitted it, but his follow- 
ers, or rather, the followers of his first mistake, 
do not believe him when he spoke the truth, go 
on killing the innocent as ever before. It is a 
fact that the Rev. Moses Hull believed in vac- 
cination and even upheld it at the time he wrote 
the work, "All about the Devil,' ' but today he 
is as firmly against it as other great men, among 
them may be mentioned Alexander Wilder, M. 
D., J. Peebles, M. D., and other scholars, Mys- 
tics and Spiritualists. Vaccination is not upheld 
by a single real Spiritualist, Mystic, Occultist, 
Rosicrucian, or Hemetist in the world, but is 
condemned to the place where it ought to be. 
I admit that some of those who claim to be Oc- 
cultists, uphold it, but these are no more true 
Occultists, than that vaccination is a protection 
against small-pox. 

Next, the devil was in the anti-slavery move- 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 119 

ment. God and the Church were in favor of 
slavery; the devil was trying to overthrow God's 
precious law, by repealing the clause which 
says, "Cursed be Canaan," etc. 

"Every Church in Christendom denounced 
the abolitionists, and said slavery was a divine 
institution, until Infidels and heretics carried it 
on to success. I have in my possession today, 
books containing the resolutions passed by all 
the leading churches in favor of the divinity of 
slavery and against fire-eating Infidel abolition- 
ists. The abolition ball had long been rolling 
up hill ; the Church had either been fighting the 
work or standing by and looking listlessly on 
until the whole world saw it was bound to be a 
success in spite of all opposition, when they 
rushed to the work with a ' ' Come on, boys, give 
it one more roll. Heave, oh, heave.' ' Then, 
when they saw the thing descending the inclined 
plane of public opinion propelled by its own 
weight, they turn to the world and say, "See 
what we've done." 

"Now, if the devil has carried all the works 
mentioned, on to success, he has in that given 
us a sufficient guarantee of the success of Spirit- 
ualism, Mysticism and other branches of the 
Soul-sciences. If the devil is in Spiritualism, 



120 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

as he has been in every other reform, the min- 
isters may as well learn from the past and sur- 
render. They are ours. The only trouble with 
them will be when they come over in a body, as 
they will do, they will all claim that they always 
were Spiritualists, and it will be about impos- 
sible to find one who did not see from the start 
that God was in Spiritualism ; and together they 
will shout and chorus, "The Church did it." 

Mr. Roberts then tries to tell us what some 
of the accepted teachings of Spiritualism are, 
and claims that they are " Doctrines of the 
Devil.' ' 

"1st. You are your own Saviours.'' 

"2d. Christ's death has nothing to do with 
the remissions of sins." 

" 3d. Each and every one of you is a judge, 
a God." 

Does any one, who is not totally ignorant, 
deny that man must work out his own salvation ! 
I think not. The doctrine "Justification by 
Faith," is becoming a dead letter with all intel- 
lectual thinkers, and the doctrine of "The one 
Saviour of the world is Love, ' ' is becoming the 
grand doctrine that must save the individual 
and the race. To answer these three articles, I 
can do nothing better than to quote from "The 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 121 

Secrets of the Universe and other Essays," by 
S. Mayle, of Eng. He says : ' ' If we watch the 
growth of love in man, especially when his indi- 
vidual love has come into contact with that of 
the great Universal Love, it seems certain that 
some outside influence is at work on that man, 
transforming him into a new creature. And 
even as in wireless telegraphy, the receiver that 
receives the message establishes conclusively the 
existence of an agent from whence that message 
emanated; may we not from man, when he be- 
comes all-loving, demonstrate the reality and 
existence of an Infinite Love? 

And it was because in his life Jesus so man- 
ifested that love, that he gave to men a revela- 
tion of God unique in its beauty. It is because 
of this that men assigned to him the pre-emi 
nence of being the one and only son of God. 
(Italics are mine throughout the whole quota- 
tion). For we thus show unconsciously our 
recognition of love as the supreme force of life. 

It was this message of love that the common 
people heard gladly, for they are more elemental 
in their natures than the cultured classes (for, 
love is always stifled by intellect). These cul- 
tured classes felt this doctrine of love to be a 
pernicious doctrine, and rested not until they 



^^— ^ 



122 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

had brought about the death of Him who so 
boldly and openly declared it to be the secret of 
all true religions. 

Thus hate (the people) met Love (Christ) 
and seemed to put him to death, only Love never 
dies; and this gospel lived on in the hearts of 
a few fisher-folks, who were so possessed with its 
truth that, like their Master, they gladly endured 
all things rather than deny its omnipotence. 

At first, however, even they failed to com- 
prehend the universality of the law that they 
gave their lives to manifest to the world ; but a 
revelation came to one of them that love may 
not be limited in its action, but must be univer- 
sal, or it is not love at all. Then learned mea 
realized the power of this teaching as a religion, 
but seeing sin to be co-existent and failing to see 
that, sin comes from want of love, evolved from 
old Jewish rites the sacrificial idea of the atone- 
ment. 

Thus has the intellect always refused to rec- 
ognize Love as the one great unifying power 
in the world, and after the death of Jesus, error 
ermeating his teaching more and more. And 
men today still misread the gospels, our churches 
still worship a dead Christ { if it were not so, the 
world would have been regenerated long ago. 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 123 

Too long the churches have been content to 
worship and mourn over a crucified Saviour. 
The one Saviour of the world is love; Love who 
lives today, who stands knocking outside the 
door of each man's heart, though man still re- 
fuses to listen to his pleading voice." 

Nothing truer was ever written, and this is 
proof positive that man is in reality his own 
Saviour. He must allow Love to come into his 
heart, his soul, and his very being. Love must 
be the Master, and when it has once become 
Master, all hate (the devil) will be rooted out. 
It is then that universal Love will be able to 
manifest itself, and man has found his God, 
through the Christ ivithin himself. The germ 
of Love is within every human being, because 
the Christ said: "Ye are the Temple of the 
Living God," but it needs the help of man to 
awaken this spark within himself, man must seek 
it; and bring it to life, and it is then, and then 
only, that they may know God. , 

The Christ was the Divine principle in the 
man Jesus, and was the Love of God perfected, 
as it possibly had never been in any being 
before. Jesus was the Mortal man, but Christ 
was the Divine Love within the Temple, or 
Jesus. 



124 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

"What are our holy days, feast days and 
lenten services, but a farce, while that voice 
pleads in vain; while around us our sinful and, 
suffering fellow-men groan under the burden 
imposed upon them by their fellows! Our 
churches are like a woman who tends the mem- 
ory of her dead child, while all the time there 
are suffering little ones craving her love and 
care. 

Let men leave their rituals, creeds, and dog- 
mas, and keep the fast that God ordains ; to do 
justice, love, mercy, and walk humbly with their 
God. Let them try to breathe warmth and vi- 
tality into Love's freezing limbs. " 'Tis life of 
which our nerves are scant, ' ' and the only life is 
Love. 

Those who throng our churches and chapels 
are those who too often fail to obey Love's di- 
vine decrees. They do not know it, no, or they 
would not do it; they do not see Love's vistage— ^ 
marred more than that of any other man, with 
the world's woes; woes that arise from its own 
lovelessness. Could they but for one moment 
see that form, hear that voice, surely they would 
surrender themselves wholly unto Love ; and in 
that surrender they would enter into what the 
joy of Love means. 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 125 

But before man can know that joy he must 
let Love master him, for Love allows no rivals ; 
he will subdue all things to himself. This is why 
men are so reluctant to yield themselves to Him. 

The man who never sins against Love, is 
without sin ; though in order to be true to Love 
he mav have to break certain man-made laws. 
But so long as he is true to Love in its highest, 
purest, noblest sense he is free from all laws. So 
far, however, man has as yet failed to grasp 
what love means; he regards it only as a means 
of enjoyment, whereas, it is as we have shown, 
a very via dolorosa. Instead of possession, it 
means renunciation ; instead of joy it means suf- 
fering. But let him once acknowledge the supre- 
macy of this law, let him yield himself to it con- 
sciously, whole-heartedly, then, though the way 
be steep and the path be stony and full of thorns, 
it will bring him at last to a vision whose exceed- 
ing glory will transcend a thousand-fold the 
highest, deepest, purest joy that earthly love 
can bestow. 

"God is love, and he that dwelleth in love 
dwelleth in God, and God in him. ' ■ Thus perfect 
communion with God in love will make man like 
unto him. "And hereby know we the spirit of 
truth and the spirit of error ; for he that loveth 



126 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

not, knoweth not God, for God is love." Our 
entrance into all the privileges of sonship is 
dependent, then, upon love, and upon nothing 
else. 

We may give all our goods to feed the poor, 
yet without love it profiteth us nothing. It is 
only when we love with a love that suffereth 
long and is kind, that envieth not, vaunteth not 
itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself 
unseemly, seeketh not its own; that bears, 
endures, and hopes all things, that never fails ; 
it is only then that we can enter into a realization 
of what the love of God means. 

Do we say that love is impossible between 
men? Yet even this last century has witnessed 
the growth of a great universal pity stirring the 
hearts of men for their suffering fellow crea- 
tures: (Witness the great work that has been, 
and is being done, against the foul and hellish 
crime of Vivisection, against the killing of ani- 
mals for the food of man, and other humane 
works), a pity that must soon burst the bonds 
that bind it, when men will know it for what it is 
—a great universal love of the human race. 

The time is now come whe.n all creeds and 
dogmas must pass away; for their work is 
ended. They are now a hindrance rather than 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 127 

a help; the one religion we all need is the 
religion of love. The one lesson we have all to 
learn, is to learn to love. 

A study of the Gospels seems to show us 
that Jesus himself only realized toward the end 
of his teachings, that the whole of that teaching 
was summed up in that new commandment of 
love; that he did so believe is proved by his 
words : 1 1 By 4his shall all men know that ye 
are my disciples, by love ye have one to 
another." And the disciple he loved best was 
the one who was penetrated most deeply with 
the spirit of love, his epistles being one long 
exhortation to men to love. 

"The union of God and man is essential 
before a man can be born consciously into the 
Kingdom of God. And before a man can enter 
into this conscious union with God, he must be- 
come loving. Then consciously united to God, 
he begins to know something of what the joy 
of love means, and to reflect that joy in himself. 
And as death approaches, he realizes that he has 
nothing to fear; for it is only the door through 
which he passes into a more real and vital union 
with the Supreme Love who is the 'One among 
Ten Thousand and the Altogether Lovely. ' For 
death removes the glass in which we saw Love 's 



128 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

face but darkly, and enables us at last to see Him 
face to face." 

"Each and every one of you is a judge, a 
God." Can this be proved in the face of the 
false teachings as taught by the Church! I 
think it can; and very easily at that. In his 
book "Evolution of Immortality," Freeman B. 
Dowd, under the heading of "Christ, the Light 
of Immortality, ' ' says : i i Light dawned in man 
with disobedience. Our physical eyes are merely 
images of the spiritual forms of perception, as 
sunlight symbolizes the light of spirit. Imag- 
ination is the spiritual eye, and by it are all 
discoveries made. When man's eyes were 
opened his horizon enlarged, and the area of 
the exercise of his powers was limited only by 
that horizon. He no longer could be limited by 
"the garden," a child restrained by fear, a 
slave to any power but that of his own choice. 
He entered a new and wider life, and is hence- 
forth become his own providence. God no longer 
clothes him as He does the lilies of the field, nor 
as he feeds the birds of the air. Unaided and 
alone, he must produce for himself. This is the 
price of knowledge and freedom. 

"Physical slavery is grievous, but it is a 
slight misfortune compared with mental and 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 129 

spiritual bondage. The mind which gathers 
truth by observation and investigation is free, 
but the mind which reflects only the opinions of 
others is in bondage to those opinions. He is a 
creed-bound slave, confined in his little garden 
by the command "thou shalt not" think, for 
fear of the consequences, who wears his opinions 
as he does his garments, things which are the 
work of other hands and brains. Such souls shut 
the illimitable universe out and bury themselves 
in the tombs of their forefathers, breathing over 
and again the mephitic vapors of decay and 
death, through fear of Man's greatest boon, 
freedom of thought. The pure breath of spirit 
blows over the mountains of thought, the quick- 
ening power of the Christ. It cleanses the blood 
of its sluggish vapors, changes the red lust color, 
and wafts the soul to the throne of the Great 
God. 

1 i Passion and love of self are fruitful sources 

of disease but the serpent of sensuality, lifted 
up, placed on a standard of high thought and 
action, something to be looked up to for help, 
a power having a divine use in the world of 
humanity, is for the healing of the nations. It 
is no longer the serpent of lust but the holy 
spirit of love that "Casteth out fear," for 
"Fear is torment," "Torment is hell." 



130 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

We only know that Christ is within us when 
we have an experience which demonstrates His 
presence in the sonl. We beget the Son of man 
by an effort of will in Love. He is the light of 
love and cannot be begotten of fear. That light 
can never be confounded with the smoke and 
vapor which is the issue of passional love. If 
you would have that light lift up your love, set 
it on a standard above even your power of at- 
tainment, and never let it fall into the dust and 
degradation of lust. Feed its fires with noble 
thought and constant efforts to become more 
and more worthy, merciful, charitable, gentle, 
and lovely, for this is the Christ begotten in the 
soul. The light of love illuminates even the phys- 
ical blood, purifying and permeating it with 
joy and peace. It is thus we grow wings to the 
soul. There is neither doubt nor fear in the 
soul filled with the light of love. It bears heal- 
ing on its wings and makes man superior to the 
evils of life and the circumstances of death. In 
it is the germ of immortality, that instinct which 
recoils from the presence of death and prophe- 
sies of eternal being beyond the change of form. 

' * Will controls matter, love controls will, 
and the true man controls his love. Immortality 
is of the whole man; he cannot be saved in 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 131 

pieces, neither can half of a man become immor- 
tal. The way to immortality is in the body, but 
no form remains fixed/ ' The immortal have 
power to change forms at will. Form limits 
freedom. Forms of thought imprison the mind 
as the body holds the spirit. Those who are free 
in thought little think of forms of thought that 
are hoary with age. No man or woman bound 
down with creeds, as the modern churchman is, 
can be free in thought or action, they are bound 
down to a certain circle, in which they are bound 
to stay. They dare not think for themselves, 
but must believe as the clergy of that particular 
creed tells them. They do not think, but think 
they do, and it is in this where they make their 
great mistake. They may read the Bible, but 
will take the interpretation of the Orthodox 
Ministry as the truth. When man once starts to 
think, then there is hope for that man, but so 
long as he does not think, he is of necessity in 
the dark. 

" Life-giving, immortalizing, religious 
thought when formulated soon becomes enwrap- 
ped in ceremonies which become automatic, and 
the ecstasy of individual experience of its exal- 
tation turns to a cold and barren public duty. 
So it is with the form which we call man. The 



132 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

free soul ignores form, or regards it as a hin- 
drance ; and the cults which teach that its power 
can be lessened by opposing and denying its 
legitimate demands but seek a way from the 
soul into freedom. The body is a sacred edifice, 
the temple of the living God, and He only can 
change and dissolve it. 'If man were to with- 
draw himself wholly from the body at death, 
it would vanish like a vapor. Death is only a 
partial withdrawal, for as long as the thought of 
the form remains, something of the body will 
hold together. A partial withdrawal of the man 
is demonstrated in sleep and in trance. 

Jesus possessed the power wholly to with- 
draw from the body, and it vanished into the 
invisible world. He passed through the form 
of death to show the world the domination of 
man over the forces of form, both of organiza- 
tion and disorganization. Christ did not pass 
through the form of death so that all that be- 
lieved in Him and believed that He did so, wo aid 
be saved. But He passed through this form to 
shoiv man how he might do the same thing by 
awakening the Christ, or Love, within himself. 
Man is his own saviour, in a sense, no matter 
what the Church may teach. A man may believe 
that there was a Christ, and that he died and 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 133 

arose, all that he wishes, but unless he awakens 
this same Christ tvithin himself, through Love 
Universal, and Love of the One, he will never 
be Immortal. 

"The light of the Christ shone out pre-emin- 
entlv in the man Jesus, who affirmed that of 
Himself He could do nothing, that it was the 
Father working in Him, and that those who 
believed in the Father should do greater works. ' ' 

The Christ said : * i Ye are the Temples of the 
living God," and unless man first believes this, 
it stands to reason, that he will be unable to find 
the God and the Christo within himself. It is 
necessary to believe this, that we are the 
temples of the living God, before we can set to 
work to awaken this Divine Spark within us, 
and thus find the Christ. Even though a man 
would find the Christ within, and would not 
have the Faith to do these things, he would be 
unable to do anything. It was for this very 
reason that the Christ told His disciples to have 
faith in the Father. 

"The spirit within himself and without He 
recognized as a creative, loving presence, the 
Christ by whom and through whom He worked, 
suffered and died. That 'He did not many 
mighty works' in some localities shows the defi- 

9 I 



134 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

ciency of the Christ spirit in the aura of those 
places His prayer in the garden of Gethsemane, 
the announcement, 'Thy faith hath made thee 
whole,' his feeling that ' virtue had gone out of 
him' at the touch of the diseased woman, and 
especially his cry on the cross, 'My God! my 
God! why hast thou forsaken me?' all go to 
prove that He recognized a power within and 
without greater than Himself, with which He 
was intimately connected. 

"Human nature is changeable and cannot 
furnish a permanent abiding place for the 
Christ spirit, and in the absence of it Jesus the 
man 'cried out with a loud voice and gave up 
the ghost. ' But the Holy One could not see cor- 
ruption, and when its object was so far accom- 
plished, the Christ spirit again took up the body 
of the man Jesus, and after exhibiting it to the 
disciples on several occasions, caused its per- 
manent disappearance. 

"We of the Rosy Cross hold that the Christ 
is begotten in us by the union of the soul with 
that all-embracing energy which ebbs and flows 
throughout conscious being. We also hold that 
it is no respecter of persons, but is born in every 
soul that loves, believes, and wills its presence. 
The Christ is called the Son of man because it is 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 135 

begotten by the love of man for God and his 
brethren. ' ' 

I believe that all true Spiritualists believe 
this with Dowd, as this is the only true Doctrine 
of Salvation and the begetting of Christ within 
the being— man. I find that Dr. Peebles believes 
this also, for he says: "The primitive Chris- 
tians were religious Spiritualists. They often 
saw Jesus in visions, and in His name they 
healed the sick. Spiritualism, the complement 
of Christianity, sweetens the bitterest cup, helps 
bear the heaviest burdens, lightens the darkest 
day, comforts the saddest heart, and gathering 
up the kindly efforts we make in behalf of our 
fellow-men, transfigures them with its bright- 
ness, ennobles them with its moral grandeur, and 
throws around them the circling aureole of fade- 
less splendors. And further, by and through its 
holy ministries, we know that the grave is no 
prison house for the soul, but that life pro- 
gressive is ours, eternal in the heavens. The 
higher Christianity and Spiritualism are com- 
ing together. Their aspirations and aims are 
one. Love is Christ's test of Christianity — that 
Christ Jesus who was "the first born among 
many brethren. " " We know, ' ' said the beloved 
John, "That we have passed from death unto 



136 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

life, because we love the brethren." Pure love, 
remember, is the divine seal of Christian dis- 
cipleship. 

Does this look as though the true Spiritual- 
ists did not believe in the Christ! I do not think 
so ; yet, the Church tells us that we are of the 
devil, and deny the Christ. This is absolutely 
false, and were there such an individual as the 
devil, I would be inclined to believe that he was 
helping the clergy to circulate falsehoods against 
the Christ, Love, and true Religion. Here we 
have three of the greatest authorities in the 
world to agree on a single point. Each of these 
belongs to a different Hierarchy, as it were, yet, 
they all agree as to what Christ is, and how 
the Christ principle works to bring about the 
salvation of man. Neither denies the Christ, but 
all uphold Him. 

Again Dowd says: "When Jesus alluded 
to death it was the physical death with which 
we are acquainted. To the Jews he said, 'Your 
fathers did eat manna in the wilderness and 
they are dead. ' There is no spiritual death ; the 
breath of God cannot die. The Salvation Jesus 
taught was of this world, being free from pain, 
disease, and death. He affirmed that He would 
lay down His life, but none could take it without 
His consent 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 137 

"Christ speaking in Jesus says: 'He that 
belie veth on Me shall not die ;and though he were 
dead yet shall he live again/ To believe with 
the heart is to do and to be. The fact that 
Jesus spent thirty years of His life like an ordi- 
nary man and then fasted forty days and nights 
alone on the mountain proves that He was not 
exempt from the struggle all must know who 
would evolve within themselves the immortal 
Christ, the Son of man." 

Again Mr. Roberts tells us that the Spiritu- 
alists believe in a doctrine, which is a doctrine of 
the devil, which says: "There is no God any- 
where to forgive sins. There is no such thing as 
forgiveness of sins." To admit that man can 
be forgiven for the sins he commits without suf- 
fering for them would be to admit the truth of 
the doctrine of "Justification by Faith," which 
no true man can believe in. This is a doctrine 
for cowards, but not for men. If the coward 
and degenerate commits any crime, he desires 
to get through one way or another, without the 
legitimate punishment of such wrong doing. He 
was degenerate enough to commit the deed, but 
is not man enough to take the just dues for such 
wrong doing. The true man, when he commits 
a wrong, is willing to suffer the legitimate pun- 



138 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

ishment of his wrong-doing, and would not get 
down low enough to ask for mercy instead of 
justice. A wrong committed unknowingly, is 
not a sin ; as man cannot be held responsible for 
that which he does not know. The forgiveness 
of sin is a huge farce and one of the foundations 
of Churchism, but is not one of the doctrines 
of the Christ. Freeman B. Dowd tells us that: 
"The idea of a day of universal resurrection 
and judgment is out of harmony with infinite 
wisdom and justice. To the soul there are no 
days or years, but one eternal now, and God is 
all the time within us in judgment. 

"When a man's sins overtake him is the day 
of judgment for him; when his misdeeds come 
thronging back into his consciousness, demand- 
ing recognition and reward, the God within 
judges, separates, and punishes, and the soul is 
the great white throne of Deity. ' ' 

One of the punishments after death consists 
in atoning for one's bad and baneful influence 
while on earth ; and the more extensive this has 
been, the more fearful the penalty self-inflicted 
therefor. The man who has taught millions that 
God is a revengeful being; that He ever stands 
ready to hurl ruin and destruction on the world 
—to rain literal fire and brimstone on the earth, 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 139 

and thus frighten people into woe and insanity, 
—must abide the consequences, and in the world 
beyond be compelled to face the dreadful music 
himself may have evoked. And so with others, 
let their influence be what it may. Eternal jus- 
tice rules the destiny of mankind; and sooner 
or later its behests must be and will be accom- 
plished. 

God does not punish any of his children, nor 
does he forgive their wrong-doing. The wrong- 
doer will receive his just reward, for the Christ 
said : ' * The hand that smites thee is thine own, ' ' 
thus proving that it is man himself that metes 
out his own punishment. Since hell must have 
a beginning, it must also have an end, and there 
is no such thing as an Eternal hell. Man must 
only suffer in the Spirit world until he can for- 
get his wrong doing, when he will pass to 
another state and advance as all beings do. 
There is no standing still in this or any other 
world, evolution is the law in every state. 

The human soul is kaleidoscopic according 
to Randolph. The scenes it forever conjures 
up before it from out its mighty deeps, and by 
which it is surrounded, are constantly and for- 
ever changing ; no matter whether its locality be 
on earth, in the mid-region of the great world's 



140 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

atmosphere, on the confines of the two great 
states embodied or free, or whether it be a 
dweller in the city of divine souls, the law is the 
same and incessantly operative. Change is 
written on all things; and although in essence 
soul can never alter, yet its moods and phases 
constantly do, else Hell would be a permanency, 
Earth stand still, and Heaven grow monot- 
onous. In accordance with this principle, there- 
fore, no scene in the Soul-world is a perma- 
nency, but as soon as one has produced all the 
joy or pain it can to those from whom it is an 
outgrowth or projection, it changes, but ever 
toward the higher and more resplendent. 

"When a man forsakes his evil ways and 
turns his back on wrong-doing, his sins turn 
back also and follow him. They are the angular- 
ities of his nature, the atoms of which he is 
made. Let him receive them as a father his 
wayward children. 

"Their home is the love of evil that gave 
them being, and there they have a right to return 
to die, to be indrawn and forgotten, or forgiven, 
being received in love and recognized by wis- 
dom, their work having been accomplished ac- 
cording to the law of their existence. 

"This is the at-one-ment, the indrawing of 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 141 

evil to its source. Jesus said, * Resist not evil. ' 
If the evil instinct be indrawn and transmuted 
into good, no outward evil can harm us. Love 
is the universal absorbent in whose infinite 
bosom evil disappears. 

"The consequences of our evil actions come 
home to the source of the actions; their death 
throes are painful, but all regrets cease and 
tears are wiped away when we succeed in for- 
giving ourselves. 

"There can be no salvation of the race until 
each individual of it is cemented to all by broth- 
erly love. There can be no salvation of the indi- 
vidual so long as the different faculties of the 
mind are at war with each other. Salvation is 
in harmonious union, or perfect moral and phy- 
sical health. 

"Salvation cannot be perfected in a diseased 
bodyj and it is to teach this truth that Jesus 
heaied the sick. His religion is physical and 
spiritual, but the first work is with the body. 
Disease and pain make the mind opaque; the 
light cannot shine through it. Pain is only the 
froth and foam of being, in too great agitation. 
It is the result of the jar and friction of oppos- 
ing elements of mind and body. If the atoms of 
the body be true one to another, and the ele- 



142 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

ments of the mind are in harmony, all is peace 
in the outer and inner man. Truth, peace, and 
joy descend into the minutest atom of being, as 
the body is built or rebuilt by the quality of our 
thought. ' ' 

" Jesus says, 'God is a spirit, and those who 
worship him must worship him in spirit and 
in truth.' The 'Spirit and the truth' you are 
enjoined to worship in are your own love and 
the reality of your soul. The spirit of God en- 
tering in impregnates the soul, and this is wor- 
ship in its fullest sense. To know truth one 
must worship it, not with song or words or cere- 
monies, however charming or esthetically sat- 
isfying, but in the secret recesses of being, when 
'thou hast entered into thy secret closet and 
shut the door, that nothing may distract or dis- 
turb the calm of spirits.' " 

Did Jesus raise the dead? Whether this is 
to be taken literally or not, is a question asked 
by the greatest scholars. It is a fact that Christ 
meant those that were "dead in Christ," the 
peoples of the world, who had not yet awakened 
the divine spark in their being ; who had not 
yet learned that they were the temple of the 
living God. I am not prepared to deny that 
Christ did not even raise a few that were dead 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 143 

in the literal sense, as this is neither impossible 
in some cases, nor yet a miracle, but his teach- 
ings did not refer to raising those that had died 
a literal death, bnt to those that were dead in 
sin as we understand it, and that his teachings 
did this, cannot be denied by anyone, for who- 
soever findeth the Christ is regenerated and 
raised from the dead. 

Was the natural body of Jesus Christ re- 
animated after the crucifixion, and is a man to 
be judged by himself as a spirit, or by a per- 
sonal God! are questions that have been 
answered already, and I need not deal with 
them here. Is there a devil! has also been 
answered in the foregoing, and proven that the 
devil is not a being, but a principle in man, or 
a universal principle in the world. 

Spiritually and divinely speaking, is there 
sin! Narrowly catalogued, like portions of all 
church Discipline, and especially that of the 
Methodist Episcopal, and the Evangelical, at the 
instigation of which church I have been made 
to suffer untold agonies in the past, are the 
"Thou shalt," and "thou shalt not," which, 
expressing a monopoly of virtue and truth, pre- 
suppose an unqualified panancea for all wrongs, 
termed by Priestcraft as "sin" and the exten- 



144 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

sion of all true worth, called " righteousness. ' ' 
Moral wrongs cannot be made right by a priest's 
indulgence or ablution, or by a ministered cere- 
mony, neither can they be made right by an 
agent of civil law, but only by teaching the law 
of Karma to avoid the repetition of these wrongs 
in the future, and by suffering for those com- 
mitted in the past. 

One W. Delos Smith, in an article that 
appeared in "Mind," says: "The dogmatism 
of theology is the assumption of theocratic 
rights. In harmony with the expressed man- 
dates of these so-called divine systems, the. 
meaning of the term 'sin' has been taught. In 
childhood, when the mind is most susceptible to 
impressions, the idea is conveyed and empha- 
sized that 'sin' is that which offends a sensitive 
and all powerful Being who resides somewhere 
in the skies— in a city called Heaven, the streets 
of which are paved with gold. Continued offense 
will result in non-forgiveness, and then there is 
no alternative but Dante's 'Hell.' All this 
appeals strongly to the imaginative fancy of 
childhood. Intellectually impressed, conscience 
will act as a support to such belief. The appeal 
to fear aids to a coveted subjection of the mind 
by which a cunning priesthood has reigned 
supreme and unquestioned for centuries. 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 145 

This conception of sin is a delusion. It is 
the bugbear with which weak-charactered moth- 
ers frighten their children into obedience, and 
effeminate leaders of men seek recognition and 
support. Being a fallacy, its teaching is an 
insult and injustice to childhood, and a startling 
presumption on the intelligence of maturity. 

Thoughts and acts may be unwise and in- 
discreet because they are violations or trans- 
gressions of law inherent in the nature of things. 
If thoughts performed produce injustice and 
therefore pain, such acts should be avoided. 
The thought of inevitable compensation should 
rule our course of conduct, not the belief in 
offensiveness to a personal Deity. Minds that 
think, and are unselfishly true to their convic- 
tions, inevitably arrive at this conclusion. Minds 
that think for others, having selfish objects in 
view, and minds that permit such others to 
think for them, rest satisfied with the delusions 
of dogma. Such imposters, knowing that the 
perpetutation of error is to their advantage, act 
upon the principle— " Where ignorance is bliss, 
'tis follv to be wise." 

In the great conflict between Truth and 
Error, the latter for years may reign supreme, 
but " Truth crushed to earth will rise again." 

10 



146 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

In the great reaction, when all elements shall be 
harmoniously adjusted, Truth will have uni- 
versal recognition and honor. 

Where the harmony of Truth prevails, dog- 
matic "sin" cannot enter. True right or wrong 
is only a matter of attitude— of relation. Neither 
civil law nor public opinion is the criterion by 
which we may determine the status of an act. 
Where there is obedience to natural law, the 
question of right relation is settled; therefore, 
the question of right and wrong is also settled. 
To a soul in harmony with the Divine in Nature, 
the unreality of "sin" is evident. That is 
right which is in harmony with natural law. 
Obedience to principles to which all life is sub- 
ject must produce happiness ; therefore, pain is 
evidence that some law is violated. 

Injustice is usually a result of selfishness 
somewhere. Wherever injustice is done, dis- 
cordant relations have been sustained. Prompted 
by selfish greed and utterly disregarding the 
rights of others, real immorality and dishonor 
are created. Love thinketh no evil (discord) ; 
hence, love is the fulfilling of the law ^Har- 
mony). Where real love exists* harmony 
exists; and where harmony prevails so-called 
sin cannot find a place. 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 14T 

The Man of Galilee uttered a profound truth 
when, in that beatific statement, he said: 
" Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall 
see God (good). ,, The world's greatest poet, 
living this blessing, saw " Books in the running 
brooks, sermons in stones, and good in every- 
thing. 9 '* Our synoptic visions determine our 
relations ; our relations determine our character 
—and character is destiny. 

Conventional orthodoxy for years has been 
influencing and shaping public opinion on social, 
moral, and religious lines of thought. Its policy 
has ever been to see bad in everything except 
what was purified (?) through irrational and 
blind faith in a dogmatic theological theory. 
By recognized psychological law we consciously 
or unconsciously promote what we earnestly 
believe. The doctrine of total depravity is quite 
necessary in building the orthodox system of 
theology, and in these systems the term "sin" 
as usually interpreted is equally necessary. 
But, judged from the rational point of view of 
the operation of laws that this belief necessarily 
utilizes, it is a pernicious doctrine. To believe 
a character or an act to be bad (discordant) 
helps to make it so. ' ' There is no such thing as 
total depravity, no matter how bad a person may 



148 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

be, there is still, deep in the heart of such a per- 
son a spot that is very tender, and would it be 
known what this spot is, and the proper in- 
fluence used, that person would become as good 
as the best of us. The Christ principle is in 
every one, no matter how bad, it is slumbering, 
and only needs the torch of Love to be held to it, 
and it will be awakened and blossom forth 
grandly and sublime. 

"The very current of our social, moral, and 
religious life being poisoned with thoughts 
adverse to harmony, it is no wonder that the 
stench of impurity rises into the nostrils of the 
members of such conventional society and that 
sensuality and deception are perpetual. Dis- 
cord is impurity, and the impure cannot see 
Cod (good). 

The same general idea is evidenced in trends 
of current thought. Few, comparatively, 
express admiration of the good features of ma- 
terial benefits, institutions, or persons. In sec- 
tions of the West where lack of rain somewhat 
injured the corn crop, nine-tenths of the people 
magnified this misfortune, which was the whole 
burden of their conversation. In the same sec- 
tion of the country a wheat crop far above the 
average was harvested, and very few ever made 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 149 

mention of this exceptional gain. From prena- 
tal impressions to hoary-headed age, the current 
of human thought is generally directed into,, 
and educated through, pessimistic channels. 
Under such conditions the attainment of har- 
mony, purity, and love is greatly retarded. 

The power of a word in its influence on 
human life is measured by the effect its use 
produces. The term "sin," as universally 
accepted in Christendom, conveys the idea of 
antagonism to the fiat of a supreme Personality. 
This idea is mythical in origin, a will-o'-the- 
wisp in realism, and a presumption on rational 
intelligence in its use. If it ever performed a 
function of any value whatever, that time was 
in the period of civilization in which Christian- 
ity had its origin— when in accordance with the 
Jewish conception of Yahveh, a god of venge- 
ance and wrath, the motive of fear was neces- 
sary to be appealed to. The word, "sin" there- 
fore, was coined as a convenient generality with 
which to class anything opposed to what was 
pleasing to Yahveh— a wrathful god. With the 
term is most intimately related the idea of fear, 
because, mythological-like, the caprice of this 
god frequently dictated everlasting, excruciat- 
ing torment. For centuries the doctrine of 

10 I 



150 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

everlasting punishment in a lake of material 
brimstone fire, said to be the sinner's inevitable 
inheritance, was taught. Since he who entered 
this place was past the limit where reformation 
could or would be recognized, this punishment 
was of course provided as a means of revenge, 
and not for the good of the individual. 

The effect of the idea (sin), therefore, has 
been to create a fear prompted by degrading 
motives. Humanity has been kept sick through 
the influence of this imaginary miasma. It has 
been kept in bondage through the forces of this 
prejudicial and intolerant idea. It has sought 
liberty from the dungeon of ignorance but found 
only the phantom-light of this superstition to 
overwhelm it with disappointment. It has 
thirsted for the sweet waters of happiness, but 
has been supplied with cups from this spring 
of Marah. In every stage of its innate longing 
for the pure delight of Truth's symphony, it has 
heard only the discordant notes of this demon 
of error. When looking for liberation from 
the thraldom of unjust servitude, it has felt the 
lash of the whip of this superstititious fancy. 

Intellectual freedom, in which loyalty to the 
great truth-principles of life predominates, will 
relegate this imposter of "sin" to the oblivion 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 151 

of pretenders, where its baneful influence shall 
poison the stream of true human life no longer. 
There may be martyrs to the faith of non-con- 
formists, but if necessary these shall herald the 
glad new era of Truth's Millennium. ' ' 

Is there more than one kind of Spiritualism ! 
f have already treated on two kinds of Spiritu- 
alism. One, the true Spiritualism, which is of 
the Soul, the other, which is not Spiritualism at 
all, it is of the head, and is Spiritism, this is its 
proper name, and it should not be associated 
with true Spiritualism, no more than the Christ- 
religion should be associated with the modern 
so-called Christianity, or Churchism. 

Dr. P. B. Randolph, in his book, ' ' The Soul- 
world,'' tells us that there are four kinds of 
Spiritualism; these are: First, a mere bodily 
sensitiveness, nervous acuteness, and suscept- 
ibility to magnetic emanations and impressions, 
out of which arise a great deal of the stagnant 
filth and social corruption so prevalent, to 
debaucheries and license, and great evils which 
pain so greatly the hearts of true men and 
women. Second, a Spiritualism of the brain 
alone, a cerebral quickening, a hot-house ripen- 
ing of faculty, which gives rise to much talking, 
and sometimes leads to the discovery of many 



152 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

of the elements of the great principia underlying 
the Stmpathiad, and prophesies the good time 
that is yet to be. Third, "compact" Spiritual- 
ism, or that wherein and whereby a certain 
class of sensitives, be they male or female, 
become dupes of their own folly, and the vic- 
tims of disembodied maniacs, lunatics, and self- 
deluded denizens of the middle state; Spirits 
who wander on the outskirts of three worlds, 
without a permanent resting-place in either. 
These have been useful, however, inasmuch as 
they have called, and even compelled, attention 
to phenomena which they produce, and which 
cannot be explained away, nor accounted for, 
save by admitting two things: First, that 
immortality is a fixed fact ; and second, that it is 
possible to bridge the hitherto impassable 
chasm which divides earth from regions which 
lie beyond. The fourth kind, and truest and 
best, indeed that which only is truly spiritual, is 
the growing up into a spiritualized, out of the 
merely physical self -hood; and this growth of 
soul necessarily admits the subject of it into the 
mysteries of being, precisely in accordance with 
the degree of the person's own unfolding. It is 
the offspring of good resolutions, well and faith- 
fully carried out; ignores pride, talk, lust, 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 153 

hatred, envy, malice, slander, and all else which 
characterizes the other three sorts. Immortality 
is to such not an acquired, but an intuitive fact. 
Such Spiritualists are good, moral, humane, 
charitable, merciful, kind, and true; religious. 
Christian in deed as well as name; and such as 
these are never pulling down, but ever building 
up the Good, the Beautiful, and the True; and, 
when such an one dies, his or her stay in the 
Middle state is very short, for they have paid 
their ferriage, and are speedily introduced to 
the mysteries and grandeurs of the world of 
Soul. ' 

"Such an one is unfolded; and by this term 
is not meant that state to which a man arrives 
after packing the contents of two or three librar- 
ies on the shelves of his memory; by that term 
is not meant the condition of one who has ar- 
rived at honor and distinction by dint of mere 
acquaintance with learned authorities and the 
accumulation and piling up of knowledge of 
various common and popular sorts; for it fre- 
quently happens that men and women, who are 
very ignorant of all these things— and who, so 
far as they are concerned, are not ' progressed' 
at all, prove on trial to be far more ' unfolded' 
than thousands of those who have grown gray in 



154 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

the service of Letters, and who have, by per- 
sistent assiduity, succeeded in transforming them 
selves from human beings into locomotive ency- 
clopedias, splendid to look at, interesting to dine 
with and talk to, but cold, inheartful encyclope- 
dias after all. Education is often a mere mechan- 
ical mastery of useless abstrusities ; coins, which 
on the social counters jingle well, but which are 
not over and above current in the far-off worlds, 
where a boor's earnest prayer weighs far more 
than the ornate, rhapsodical orisons of scores 
of learned pedanta, who, to judge them by their 
language, take God to be a school committee 
rather than a loving, tender parent. 

' ' Thus I find true, what had previously been 
surmised, that a person may know but little, yet 
approach much nearer the Divine than one who 
has more brain furniture with a great deal less 
heart. ' ' 

Dr. Randolph wrote this many years ago, but 
it is the same today as it was in his time. To 
prove this, I will quote from an article by Dr. J. 
M. Peebles that has just been published, and the 
reader will readily see that the writings of these 
great thinkers are identical. Dr. Peebles says: 
' ' The passion of religion is universal. As spirit- 
uality is rooted in God, so the root-source of 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 155 

religion is in spirituality. Human nature was 
the same in the remotest antiquity that it is 
today. Words are but symbols of ideas. Names 
and forms change, but principles are immutable 
fixtures. We know these only as they are, in some 
degree, embodied in forms. It is the spirit that 
moulds the form. 

The history of the universe with its lower 
kingdoms, with its multitudinous tribes, sub- 
tribes and races, is as unitive as the links in the 
chain of cause and effect. It is only when man 
appears in the upward line of evolution that 
religion becomes manifest. It is the blossom of 
the spirit atom, the pearl that rises from the 
great oceanic realm of life, the crowning ascent 
from the nadir of the lower conditions to the 
zenith of conscious reverence. 

Religion should never be confounded with 
theology. The words are in nowise synonyms. 
Those who would use them interchangeably 
would be quite apt to blunderingly confound 
socialism and anarchy, hunger and appetite, the 
one the natural, the other generally abnormal, 
leading to gluttonous excesses and gormandiz- 
ing. These careless thinkers and loosely inclined 
writers would quite likely confound such words, 
too, as idea and ideal, office and official, spirit 



156 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

and spiritual, and spiritism with Spiritualism. 
The first is an old-time farce, while the latter, 
wide as the universe, comprises sense-phenom- 
ena, mental science, moral philosophy, and 
religion. 

Practical religion was beautifully expressed 
by St. James, "Pure and undefiled before God, 
the Father, is this, to visit the fatherless and the 
widows in their afflictions, and to keep thyself 
unspotted from the world. ' ' Jesus, the medium- 
jstic Nazarene, Mved this religion daily, going 
about, as the records say, "doing good." And 
Spiritualists, blest with the knowledge of the 
future existence, should do likewise, thus making 
their divine gospel a practical power in human 
redemption. ' ' 

The religious Spiritualism of the past and 
the present are one in essence— one in principle, 
though expressed in different phraseology. Evo- 
lution requires fresh statements of aim and doc- 
trine as the years roll on and the race unfolds. 
A truth uttered in the first Christian century 
requires another dialect in this twentieth cen- 
tury, and other analogies to round out the angles 
of philological transmission. 

Man is not "a religious animal," as is often 
said, but a reasoning, rational, and morally re- 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 157 

sponsible being. Remember that Spiritualism is 
not animalism— is not a helter-skelter series of 
phenomena from the lower obsessing spheres to 
gratify curiosity, to cater to individual selfish- 
ness, or to personal aggrandisement; but it is a 
spiritual force of the first magnitude, opening 
the gates of knowledge— knowledge of a future 
existence to Vedic adepts, to Hebrew seers, to 
a Socrates, to a Victor Hugo, a Robert Owen, a 
Judge Edmonds, a Sir William Crookes, and 
to all honest seekers after truth today. It is a 
priceless pearl, holding up a noble type of char- 
acter, presenting a higher ideal of living, and 
bearing aloft a new order of society, rightly 
named religious socialism, based upon justice, 
self-abnegation, and the fraternity of humanity. 
Could there be a grander consummation than 
this union of all mankind into one loving broth- 
erhood? Inspiration leads up and on to this 
mighty result, and energy, continuity in action, 
and holy purposes are the evolutionary methods 
to the attainment. 

The plain truth is, intelligent Spiritualists, 
and even thinking students of nature with no 
fixed theological convictions, have had enough 
of this Godless, Christless, prayerless, phenom- 
ena-hunting spiritism— enough of this combat- 



158 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

ive, tear-down negationism. The late Espes Sar- 
gent, one of the most brilliant of our American 
Spiritualists, wrote these words to W. Stainton 
Moses: "I am battling not only for Spiritual- 
ism proper, but against the coarse atheism of 
certain lecturers who call themselves Spiritual- 
ists. There has been too much 'coquetting' with 
a rank and brutal materialism under the guise 
of Spiritualism. To deny God and publicly 
sneer at prayer, is ruinous to the true interests 
in Spiritualism. ' ' 

Science and Spiritualism already stand side 
by side, and are working to one glorious end. In 
fact, the childhood of Spiritualism is steadily, 
surely merging into a thoughtful, substantial 
manhood. The excrescences are falling off, and 
it is putting on a whole armor of a sterling, ra- 
tional, religious maturity. From the truth mil- 
itant, it is already a long ways forward to the 
truth triumphant. No true Spiritualist ever re- 
canted— no truth ever perished. 

Standing now upon the mount of vision and 
looking down the long vista of time, I see doubt 
giving place to faith, and faith giving place to 
knowledge. I see tyranny dying upon the grassy 
plains of freedom. I see superstition receding 
before a rational religion. I see error giving 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 159 

place to the inviting brilliancy of truth, vice to 
sturdy virtue, bigotry to toleration, sectarian- 
hate to charity, policy to principle, monopoly 
to co-operation, individualism to communism, 
and grating discords to divinest harmonies. I 
see before us a new heaven and a new earth. I 
see in our midst the living Christ. I see the 
burning of the tares, the gathering in of the 
golden sheaves and a very Eden of peace, peace 
and love and good will crowning our world and 
baptizing the very heart with the pentecostal 
fires of a purified life and a divine beneficence 
as altruistic as universal. ' ' 

The phenomena of Spiritualism have estab- 
lished as a fact the continuous life of man. Death 
changes him only from the visible material plane 
to the invisible material plane. In himself there 
is no change. 

Some of the so-called dead have the power 
to make themselves visible and tangible for a 
brief space of time, showing that there are de- 
grees of knowledge and power the other side 
of death just as there are on this side. 

Sidney H. Beard, one of the greatest reform- 
ers in England, in an article which appeared in 
the "Herald of the Golden Age, "-tells us that: 
"For a long time I have believed that the 



160 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

human soul survives the death of the body, for 
the evidence that such a belief demands for its 
justification, seemed, to my mind, to be existent. 
Although it did not amount to absolute demon- 
stration, yet I felt that the accumulated testi- 
mony of those who have declared that they have 
had personal communications from the dead (so- 
called), constituted, when combined with the 
conclusions which can be logically deduced from 
well attested psychic phenomena, and when sup- 
ported by the inner voice of Intuition, a rational 
basis for such a conviction. ' ' 

But there have been moments in the past 
when. I have been tempted to question whether, 
after all, our common hope concerning human 
immortality may not possibly be due to inherited 
tendency and early education; and then I have 
yearned for definite knowledge concerning the 
life beyond the grave. 

This state of mental uncertainty, of mere 
belief, has now, however, finally passed away; 
for I have recently been permitted to pass 
through experiences which enable me to speak 
from the standpoint of personal experience con- 
cerning this matter. 

Hitherto I have believed, now 7 know, that 
when the physical body is laid aside, the soul 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 161 

retains its individuality and its consciousness. 

I have been permitted to hold prolonged con- 
versation wifh human souls who are now dis-. 
carnate, and to receive from them such com- 
munications, such evidences of their personal 
identity, such utterances concerning mundane 
and spiritual facts, as prove conclusively to me 
the reality of their post-mortem existence and 
the retention of their individual mentality. 

The quest after truth which culminated in 
these occurrences was commenced on my part 
with an open, though watchful and critical mind. 
I was fully aware of the unreliability, the per- 
sonating tendency, and the clairvoyant or mind- 
reading faculties of some of the astral or spirit- 
ual entities who seek to get into communion with 
mortals through various media, and conse- 
quently I carefully weighed and considered the 
phenomena which took place. Twenty years 
ago I was elected an Honorary Member of the 
Psychical Research Society and took part in its 
scientific experiments and investigations; con- 
sequently, I had some knowledge concerning 
psychical phenomena and test conditions. 

But after calmly reviewing all the facts and 
giving consideration to every possibility of illu- 
sion, I find it impossible to escape the unalter- 

11 



162 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

able conviction that I have indeed talked face- 
to-face with a kindred soul who left the earth- 
plane a few years ago, and whose voice, man- 
ner, gestures^ clear and lucid diction, and almost 
phenomenal knowledge concerning spiritual 
truths, were, when combined altogether unmis- 
takable. 

During several long interviews (one of which 
lasted for more than an hour, and took place in 
the presence of a reliable eye-witness), I pre- 
sented to this friend many searching questions. 
They could only have been answered in the man- 
ner in which he answered them, by one who not 
only knew all about his earthly life, his work, and 
his ideals, but who also possessed his own dis- 
tinctly denned personality and manner of speech 
and his unique comprehensive understanding of 
spiritual law and the highest forms of esoteric 
truth. Yet I did not fail to receive an immediate 
and perfectly relevant, masterly and satisfac- 
tory response to every one of them. 

Many of these responses revealed the most 
profound knowledge concerning transcendental 
phenomena, and spiritual illumination of a high 
degree. And I am convinced that it has indeed 
been my privilege to hold communication with 
one in the discarnate state, who, when on this 
earth, was verily one of God's prophets. 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 163 

The medium through whom he spoke (a 
woman aged 74), was altogether ignorant con- 
cerning him ; she possessed no knowledge of the 
subjects which we conversed about, or of my 
own identity. 

She is a sincere religious soul whose chief 
wish is to be used by God in any way that He 
may desire for the accomplishment of His pur- 
pose. And she is neither clairvoyant nor psy- 
chometric, nor does she possess the mentality 
that would have enabled her to understand the 
matters we discussed, or the phraseology that 
we used. 

But she is so constituted as to be able to sur- 
render her physical organism and her conscious- 
ness so completely, whilst in a state of trance, 
that she can be used with great facility as a 
medium for spiritual communication. 

Her bodily form was so transfigured and con- 
trolled by the spirit of my friend, that the sense 
of her presence was almost lost^ and only that of 
Him who used her physical organism was mani- 
fest. 

He said to me at the time: "I can control 

the body of this medium with almost as much 

ease as I could my own when I was in the flesh. ' ' 

And his presence could be felt as well as 



164 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

seen ; his handclasp was unmistakable ; his pow- 
erful personality beyond all counterfeit. 

He spoke to me through another medium who 
did not know my name or anything about him. 
And yet his identity was just as clearly evi- 
denced by his voice, diction, hand-clasp, manner, 
and reference to his private affairs and ideals. 

The identity of the other soul, with whom 
I held repeated converse, was also established 
by very strong evidence, and in every case was 
confirmed and attested by him whose words I 
would rather trust than that of almost any liv- 
ing man I know— not only because of his integ- 
rity, but on account of his wonderful spiritual 
insight, his well-trained observant faculties, and 
his reliable judgment. 

Two of these Visitants were well known dur- 
ing their earth-lives; they bore witness to the 
Truth and suffered for its sake. One of them 
was a Reformer who withstood the false theology 
and ecclesiastical tyranny of his day and gener- 
ation, and, by so doing, transformed the thought 
of Christendom. The other was a heroic woman 
who manifested the spiritual consciousness and 
vision, and the transcendent life, in a manner 
that is almost unparalleled in history, and she 
was burned at the stake after winning immortal 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 165 

renown and changing the fortunes and destiny of 
her country. 

They told me many things that I wanted to 
know, and said much that was calculated to help 
and encourage me in my life-work. They also 
gave me certain valuable advice, which revealed 
intimate knowledge concerning my personal 
ideals and also concerning our doings at the 
Headquarters of the Order. 

And they promised me their aid in the 
future, and assured me that I and my co-work- 
ers were being used as instruments for the ac- 
complishment of the Divine Purpose. 

My own mother came to me and spoke in 
such a way as to establish recognition on my 
part, and also another lady who was known 
throughout the world as a prominent religious 
worker, and whose intimate friendship I was 
once privileged to enjoy. 

I am not constrained to make these affirm- 
ations, merely to attract attention to my exper- 
iences, but with the hope that my testimony may 
possibly be helpful to some of our readers who 
may be harrassed with doubts concerning the 
reality of life beyond the grave. 

The dark clouds of Materialism which hang 
like a pall over the religious and scientific world 

11 I 



166 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

in these Western lands, .can only be dispersed by 
the revelation of spiritual facts. 

Each additional witness, therefore, concern- 
ing genuine psychic phenomena, whose word can 
be trusted and whose soundness of judgment is 
to any extent recognized by some of his con- 
temporaries, helps to let in the light of Truth 
which constitutes the only remedy for the mental 
obscuration that is so prevalent. 

Consequently, I feel that I am almost under 
an obligation to bear witness concerning the 
manifestations that have been given to me. 

Having, for many years, asked for spiritual 
light and knowledge, in order that I might be 
enabled to help others, by passing on to them 
what was given to me, I may not be silent con- 
cerning this matter. I do not, however, expect 
this brief narration to appeal to other minds 
with the same force as these occurrences ap- 
pealed to me." 

If there is one man in all Europe that I would 
believe, it is Mr. Beard, and I think it is not too 
much to say, that this great Reformer has done 
more for a non-flesh diet, and humaneness, than 
any other man living. Not only has he tried to 
teach humaneness in diet, but has been a strong 
fighter against the hellish crime of Vivisection, 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 167 

which is almost as prevalent in England as it is 
in America. In fact, this crime is committed 
in every civilized (!) country. 

Most clearly and emphatically does the 
teachings of Jesus to his more intimate disciples 
imply, that, with the exercise of the right kind 
of faith, we should become the media of Divine 
communication to the world ; that we should see 
and hear as those who were attuned to heavenly 
conditions, ever having the open eye of the soul 
to see heaven 's messengers when they come, and 
the ear to hear the voices that speak to us from 
the Beyond. 

But the Christian Church repudiates such 
things. She has no faith in the possibility of an 
actual communion with ministering spirits such 
as the first disciples enjoyed. And those who do 
believe such things and seek to realize their 
blessed influence, have too often to look for fel- 
lowship outside her ecclesiastical borders. 

When a few more man-made creeds wither, 
die and rot into deserved non-entity, when 
Christ's Christianity, which is pure Spiritual- 
ism, prevails, when nominal Christians become 
more Christ-like and nominal Spiritualists more 
spiritual, the chasm of shibboleths and almost 
brutal dogmatisms, will be bridged, souls will be 



168 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

baptized afresh, estranged hands will be clasped, 
unsympathizing hearts will be warmed by the 
pentecostal flames of love, angels will the more 
readily daily walk and talk with mortals, and 
all be recognized as constituting a vast fraternal 
commonwealth of gods, angels, spirits, and men ; 
and love, pure, unselfish love— Christ's universal 
love— will then be the one acknowledged spirit- 
ual religion of the world. 

If you want to be true Spiritualists, then let 
all your aims be high and holy. Lift your aspir- 
ations towards loftier points, and struggle for 
more elevated positions in the realm of thought. 
As you thus aspire, there is not an angel bend- 
ing from the snowy clouds that roll as an ocean 
of drapery on the blue depths of the sky, but will 
smile with exceeding beauty upon all such 
efforts ; whilst images of unfading beauty shall 
forever be thine, coming to thee in quick succes- 
sion from the heaven of brighter minds above 
you. Thus, you will become united and you will 
be enabled to move forward as a glorious 
Brotherhood along the pathway of progress that 
lies before you. And in this way, through the 
magnetism of unity, of sympathy, and of love, 
love for all things, you shall preach louder in 
behalf of truth than all the media you can place 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 169 

upon your rostrum, however good they may be. 

Learn to love one another, and aim to dis- 
card whatever is calculated to retard your ad- 
vance in this direction. Let your common faith 
in the immortality of spiritual truth be written 
as with ink of fire, and let your diversities of 
opinion with regard to the various manifesta- 
tions of this truth be inscribed on the shifting 
sand, remember that the fundamental principles 
are alike in everything, but the theories of no 
two men are alike. Cast aside prejudice and 
bigotry, which too often magnifies the points of 
difference between you, and use charity and 
reason, which will bring within the horizon of 
your view the manifold and mingling beauties 
of the glorious cause you all so much love. 

"Pure Living and Spirituality. How is it 
that the psychic vision of the church is lost? 
Why has she no more gifts of tongues, and 
prophecy, and esoteric interpretation. Because 
a dark three-fold veil hangs across her Intuition, 
shutting out the vision of the Holy Place. ' ' 

The veil of blood is still before her. Though 
she no longer offers animal sacrifices on her 
altars to God, she offers them to the mammon 
of taste and appetite. She lives in a realm of 
blood. She takes a more active part in the 



170 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

slaughter of animals for food, and permits their 
torture for scientific knowledge. (Vivisection). 
She is the supposed purifier of the land, yet the 
land is full of blood; and alas, she approves 
of it. 

She values her ceremonies and outward bul- 
warks more than the gracious influences of the 
Eternal Spirit. In short, to a large extent, she 
is only the reflection of the world-spirit. She is 
like the sky taking the earth's reflections of 
colour rather than giving her Divine tone to the 
earth. 

This appalling blindness to spiritual real- 
ities, this awful deafness to the Voice that 
speaks out of the Silence, can never be removed 
till her hands are washed white from the blood- 
stains that she hath put there. 

She must give up her love of fresh-meats, 
ner cowardly attitude towards the oppressors of 
the animal kingdom, her callousness concerning 
the rites of the physiological laboratories, which 
are no less than the Hells of so-called science of 
the present day. 

She must teach the royal road of love even 
towards the lower races. She must learn that 
God will have mercy and not sacrifice, that a 
gentle spirit is more acceptable to Him than 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 171 

feast-days, sacred hours, and mere rites or cere- 
monies. Yea, she must learn the secret doctrines 
of the universe, the unity of all Being, the uni- 
versal Oneness of life. Unless she does, never 
will the Divine Vision be hers, nor hers the priv- 
ilege to hear the sublime messages from the 
Beyond. 

For these great and glorious privileges are 
the fruits of personal dedication to the highest 
ideals, and a genuine effort to realize spirit- 
uality. 

Only by earnest endeavor to overcome carnal 
limitations can she be brought into such intimate 
fellowship with Heaven as to learn the mind 
of the Master through direct communion; and 
so gain His secret. And, with that talisman, 
open up the whole spiritual realm to the soul. 

The great mystics who so intimately com- 
muned with the highest spirits have always been 
men and women who repudiated flesh food and 
lived on the simplest fare, not only curbing the 
appetites, but also refining the senses till these 
were sensitive to the influence of heaven, and 
could become the venues of heavenly messages. 

And here I would remind all my fellow Chris- 
tians who are known as Spiritualists, that the 
purest and highest cannot be reached without the 



172 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

consecration of the heart, mind and body to pure 
feeling, pnre thinking, and pure living. If the 
Christian Church has long lost the Psychic gift, 
and come to deny its realization (though she 
holds it in her philosophy), and that through 
the failure of her members to understand the 
essentiality of simple, pure, natural diet in 
order to fit the body to become the temple of the 
Eternal Spirit ; so we may rest assured that the 
highest psychic gifts and the purest, truest psy- 
chic communications, can be ours only through 
prayer and fasting— through that prayer which 
is, a continual aspiration after the Divine; and 
that fasting which is a purification of all the 
senses, and the harmonizing of them with the 
will of heaven. 

If all who truly believe in spiritual science 
and practice it would exalt and enlarge their 
faith by the purification and consecration of 
their bodies, so that henceforth they might be- 
come fit channels of Divine communication to 
the saints, what a power for righteousness might 
they not become ! What an increase of spiritual 
knowledge, fellowship, and aspiration might 
they not bring down to the world ! They would 
then come to be what the members of the Chris- 
tian Church ought to have been— circles of men 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 173 

and women whose souls are open to the light of 
heaven, who give its influxes freedom of access 
because they have rent the veil of materialism 
which divides and cuts off God from the soul." 
—Rev. J. Todd Ferrier, in the "Herald of the 
Golden Age." 

This is one of the altruistic works that the 
Spiritualist must take a hand in, and he dare 
not stop until the last anim#l has been killed for 
food. Spiritual communication can never be 
at its best as long as the body of man is loaded 
down with the blood and decaying carcass of his 
fellow being, a being that has just as much right 
to live as man has. It is inhuman to kill, even 
for food, man is not a flesh-eating animal, but 
is a Divine being, whose natural food is such as 
needs no shedding of blood. 

While beef or mutton is bad enough, pork 
is still worse, and there is absolutely nothing 
that will fill up the whole system of man with 
unnatural passion as soon as pork will. It 
makes him a passionate brute, unfit for the asso- 
ciation of any decent woman. Were this pas- 
sion normal it would not be so bad, and might 
be kept within bounds, but it is not, and being 
abnormal and wholly animal, it cannot be kept 
within bounds, and by looking around you you 



174 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

will be able to see the results. There are those, 
some self-styled Dietary Food reformers, espe- 
cially a woman in London, who tells us that to 
keep in good health, use mutton in summer and 
pork in winter. To this I would add : and take 
a bundle with you to hell to keep up the abnor- 
mal passion fire, for you will need it beyond the 
grave. The hog is possibly the most loathsome 
animal alive, and how anyone can claim such 
food to be the natural diet for man, I fail to 
understand. Just think; a clean spirit to hold 
communications through the body of a medium 
which is loaded down with the filthy carcass of 
the hog! Such a thing is utterly impossible, 
and the sooner people will learn better, the bet- 
ter for them. It is to be hoped that no true 
Spiritualist will follow the Church in this re- 
spect, but will do all in his power to stop the 
slaying of the innocent in order to satisfy the 
abnormal appetite of man. 

God, according to the Bible, did not intend 
that man should eat meat, for in Gen. i, 29, we 
find: "God said, Behold, I have given you 
every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face 
of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the 
fruit of a tree yielding seed ; to you it shall be for 
meat." Christians and other so-called and self- 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 175 

styled food reformers have never read this, 
doubtless it is not in their Bible, or if it is, it 
does not mean them. Let us hope that all true 
Spiritualists, Mystics and others of this class, 
are able to find it in their Bible, and follow it. 

The vegetarian diet is the most favorable 
to purity, chastity, and to perfect control of the 
appetites and passions, which are often a source 
of great temptation, especially to the young of 
all so-called civilized nations, in uncivilized, or 
heathen nations, flesh is not used as food for 
man. 

Meat eating is the main cause of drunken- 
ness, and you all know how dif gusting it is to see 
a drunkard, not considering the awiul suffering 
that drinking causes to millions of women and 
children, bringing shame and disgrace on count- 
less numbers of the innocent. 

The enormous increase in cancer and con- 
sumption during the last hundred years is due 
to a great extent to the eating of meat. Vaccin- 
ation is the main cause of these diseases, and 
meat eating follows this awful crime of child- 
hood. With vaccination and meat eating stop- 
ped, cancer, consumption, scrofula, and other 
diseases of this kind would soon be a thing of 
the past. It is almost impossible to find a per 7 



176 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

son nowadays, that does not have his or her 
blood filled with scrofula, You ask what is the 
cause of this; the answer is— Pork. Pork as 
a food, cannot be too strongly condemned, and 
the Hebrew does well in letting it severely alone, 
and it is very seldom that you find a Hebrew 
who is suffering from scrofula, unless he is a 
Reformed (?) Hebrew. 

Another crime that all true Spiritualists and 
Mystics should do all in their power to abolish, 
is Vivisection. This is one of the greatest 
crimes that afflicts modern civilization. It could 
not exist, were it not for the fact that the Roman 
Church upholds it openly, and all other so-called 
Christian denominations give their silent, con- 
sent, and are therefore accessories to the crime. 

In a manifesto lately issued by Monsieur 
Vaughan is this statement: "Cardinal New- 
man expresses the teachings of the Church as 
follows: 'We have no duties towards the brute 
creation; there is no relation of justice between 
them and us. Of course, we are bound not to 
treat them ill, for cruelty is an offense against 
that holy law which our Maker has written on 
our hearts, and it is displeasing to Him. But 
they can claim nothing at our hand; into our 
hands they are absolutely delivered. We may 



TEinrSPIRITUALISM 177 

me them, we may destroy them at our pleasure, 
not our wanton pleasure, but still for our own 
ends, for our own benefit and satisfaction, pro- 
vided that we can give a rational account of what 
we dp.' M 

Sidney H. Beard, Esq., then says: "An 
attempt is then made to justify this illogical and 
inconsistent mixture of paganism and Christian 
piety, which, alas, reveals only too clearly the 
visual limitations of him who wrote it and of 
those who can accept such as inspired teaching, 
by a series of artful, plausible, and sophistical 
statements which are calculated to so confuse 
the real issue in the minds of untrained think- 
ers, as to create the hallucination that the Rom- 
ish Church is, notwithstanding her advocacy of 
Vivisection, the only genuine exponent of benefi- 
cence and compassion in this world/ ' 

"This priestly defense of Vivisection is, 
practically, but the presentation in another 
form of the old dogma which has ever been the 
distinguishing mark of all materialistic priest- 
hoods — that deliverance from the penalty of 
human transgression is to be obtained by the 
vicarious suffering of some innocent victim!, 
rather than by the amended life of the individual 



sinner." 



12 



178 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

"This Romish Manifesto may be summed 
up by the affirmation that it presents an ethical 
creed which is distinctly lower and more bar- 
barious than that which justifies the burning of 
martyrs by the Romish Inquisition. The human 
victims of the 'Dark Ages,' were Ecclesiastic- 
ism ' bossed \ mankind, were ostensibly— though 
not really— burned for the good of their own 
souls and in order to proniote their own salva- 
tion ; but these poor animal victims are openly 
and avowedly sacrificed in order that sinful man 
may find some way to escape from the conse- 
quences of his wrong-doing. 

It is Moloch-worship, pure and simple, in an 
up-to-date form. And the Church which openly 
defends such systematic tormenting and mas- 
saereing of harmless souls, and which denies 
them all rigths— whether as sentient beings or 
as God's creatures— does but pronounce its own 
doom. 

For the coming generations, who will be 
characterized by more enlightenment than dis- 
tinguishes this present one, will most certainly 
repudiate ethical and religious teachings which 
is manifestly characterized by materialistic 
blindness, and an almost total eclipse of spir- 
itual and intuitional perception. ' ' 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 1 79 

While other denominations have not issued 
any manifestoes upholding this hellish crime, 
yet, by their silent consent, are they upholding 
this foul practice. Like the Romans, they are 
willing to sacrifice all lower life, if by so doing, 
they will be able to save themselves from the 
lawful penalty of wrong doing. The present 
day churchism teaches the grossest immorality 
that it is possible for any man or thing to teach. 
Before gross materialism invaded Buddhistic 
India, under the name of Christianity, meat was 
not eaten as a food, and all animal life was 
recognized as sacred, but all that is now changed 
and there is but a slight difference between there 
and here. Let all true Spiritualists and Mystics 
do all in their power to bring about the abolition 
of this horrible crime* 

Following Vivisection, and still, more awful 
in its ; effects on humanity, comes Vaccination. 
As Vivisection is the Kell of Science, so is Vac- 
cination the Hell of childhood. No language 
is too harsh to be used in denouncing, this foul 
and deadly crime, the crime that has killed 
thousands of innocent children, maimed thour 
sands more, and filled the blood of the people 
with : filthy and loathsome diseases, so, that even 
their children are filled with deadly, .poisons, 



180 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

that make their appearance sooner or later. 
Vivisection is a crime on the lower beings, but 
Vaccination is a crime whose effects are directly 
on the human family. Were each one allowed 
to have his free will in the matter, it would not 
be so bad, but through villainous physicians and 
demoralized law-makers, laws have been passed 
in many of our states, forcing a man to have 
his children poisoned by the foul and deadly 
pus poison, which in itself is so loathsome and 
disgusting, that it is almost impossible for us 
to believe, that even demoralized human beings 
can uphold it, much less force it on others. 

These are two of the crimes that all true men 
should fight against,, and seek their abolition, 
even though they must give their life and liberty 
in the cause. There is yet another crime of 
civilization that is as bad, although its effects 
are not always on conscious life, and that is 
abortion. I have already treated this subject 
fully, and it is not necessary for me to say more 
about it at this time. 

These three crimes— Vivisection, Vaccina- 
tion, and Abortion, form the sacred Trinity of 
Hell, and no demons could wish for a Trinity 
that is more foul, and that can cause more 
destruction and crime than these three. 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 181 

Any of these three might well be used as an 
offering in the rite of the witches of the Black 
Sabbath, which makes any one shudder, or it 
might well be used as the rites of the Grand 
Grimoire. Either of the three is foul and deadly 
enough, and would surely satisfy these followers 
of hell itself, as. an offering in performing their 
rites. Nothing more loathing was ever practiced 
by the followers 01 the Grand Grimoire, nor by 
those that took part in the Black Sabbath, of 
which every student of the Occult is familiar. 

We must remember that it is not enough to 
develop and become like the Christ, for there is 
then a work for us to do. Even the Christ forgot 
self in the work that He tried to do for a suffer- 
ing humanity, so must we. Until all men and all 
things are free, we cannot be free. Until these 
crimes are abolished, we are not free men. Let 
us do our part, let us help humanity to get on 
its feet and throw off the shackles of the bigoted 
and inhuman few, and establish a universal 
religion, a religion of Spirituality and Individ- 
uality. 

i ' Spiritualism not only demonstrates a future 
existence, not only teaches the certainty of suf- 
fering in all worlds for wrong-doing , not only 
encourages invention, art, science, exploration, 

12 I 



182 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

and all sanitary enterprises, not only shows 
memory to be the 'Recording angel/ and self- 
denial, nobleness of purpose, purity of life and 
sweet spirituality to be the ascending steps to 
heaven, but it strikes the chains from millions of 
slaves and builds unsectarian universities." 

If you are a true Spiritualist, then follow 
these teachings, and help to abolish these crimes 
and strike the chains from your fellow beings 
who are slaves, and in a night of utter darkness. 

(THE END.) 



PROSPECTUS OF 

Universal Brotherhood of Man 

"One God, One Law, One Element: 

And One far-off event 
To which the whole creation moves." 

Tennyson, "In Memoriam." 

'Let us build altars to the Blessed Unity 
which holds Nature and Souls in perfect solu- 
tion, and compels every atom to serve an uni- 
versal end."— Emerson. 

WHAT IS THIS BLESSED UNITY? 

There is but One. We may call it what we 
please, the Universe or God, or by any other 
name. It is the same. The serpent has his 
tail in his mouth; the chain of causation and 
relation is nowhere broken, nor can it be. 

♦Circular prepared by F. Oscar Biberstein, from the teachings of 
''Dawn Thought" by J. Wm, Lloyd and "Brotherhood, Nature's Laws" 
by Burcham Harding. 



184 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

If the One created the Universe, He must 
have made it from Himself, for there was 

nothing else to make it from, and this Universe 
and all that it contains, must be still Himself, 
just as the body is the man in his outward as- 
pect. Is this theory true f If so, then everything 
is convertible and in the last analysis all are 
one and the same. 

The One must be Life, and everything must 
be alive. The One Life pervades all regions of 
space and all forms. It is everywhere, bound- 
less, infinite, eternal. It is the origin of every- 
thing visible and invisible. Yes, of everything, 
of all that has been, now is and ever shall be. 

The One Life is divided into many " lives' ' 
which lives are parts of itself. In other words, 
the One Great Force or Energy of Nature is 
subdivided into innumerable smaller forces, or 
centers of force, each being separable from The 
One Life and identical in Essence with it. 

The whole — all nature — then is One, and 
this grand Truth all things in nature repeat to 
us in ever varying lessons. Everything in 
nature seeks Unity, equilibrium, the center and 
though continually thrown out, persistently 
returns from whence it came, just as man goes 
back to Nirvana. Let us consider the waters. 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 185 

Though lifted up in mists and clouds, they drop 
swiftly back through all their shining levels to 
the sea. And, if more slowly, the uplifted 
mountains are just as certainly and stubbornly 
flowing down into the valleys. When we seek 
for a clear partition and definition between 
mineral and vegetable, vegetable and animal, 
animal and man, man and God, we fail to find 
it. Any of these viewed centrally is different 
enough but when we seek for boundary lines 
they forever elude, and that, because they do 
not exist. They are but convenient fictions, 
lines on our maps which the fields and forests 
they cross know not of. Does not evolution 
reveal a perpetual touch and blending all along 
the lines of life! Do not the methods, the 
"laws" of nature apply universally? Is not 
each thing a type and figure of every other 
thing? Is not man a microcosm of the macro- 
cosm! Study comparative anatomy, and see 
how every nerve and muscle and bone hints 
of the human. Run sex down, if you can, and 
find some element or aggregation which knows 
nothing of the power of the dual principle. 

Motion and rest are all of life, and all our 
motions are in pursuit of rest. 

We all stand on the earth, and are united 



186 TRUE SPlRtTtfALISM 

by our touch of it, and by the air which ever 
pursues, by the cheer which never leaves us, by 
electric and magnetic currents, interpenetrat- 
ing, by strange, invisible nervous sympathies 
which clairvoyance, telepathy, and similar mar- 
vels, occasionally reveals to us. We are united 
by our common needs, weaknesses, passions, by 
our common origin and destiny. 

Look how reproduction unites us. The act- 
ual substance and life of the parent goes into 
the child, and there is no break in the life. The 
life in the seed is the life, and the finest life, of 
the parent, and develops without cut-off into the 
off -spring, an extension of the parent. Human- 
ity is like an undying tree, and dying individual 
forms are like the dropping leaves. 

And humanity is only a limb of a Great 
Tree, or Body of Life equally inseparate. 

Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fid fill 
the Law of Christ.-ST. PAUL. 

The study of the One Life and its constitu- 
ent parts or lives, makes it clear that Universal 
Brotherhood is both a law and a fact in nature ; 
for everything in nature, in this physical world, 
exists by reason of the mutual helpfulness that 
all parts render to one another. 

In the lower kingdoms, this is co-operation 



TTCtJE SPIRITUALISM 187 

compulsory, for the moulding force from a 
higher kingdom impels the "lives" to render 
assistance.; Itjs this co-operation which holds 
together the forms for a period, and then re- 
laxes, allowing the "lives" to break-up their 
prisons and seek progress in new directions 
It governs also human beings, but with this 
difference: that the individual is not compelled 
but must voluntarily determine to work in ac- 
cord with this natural law. 

Brotherhood is both a law and a fact in 
nature, taught by every object, and cannot be 
ignored without dire consequences. All ' * Lives ' ' 
belong to one great brotherhood, as sparks of 
the One Life or as drops of the mighty ocean 
of life. Their co-operation is exemplified 
throughout nature's workshops, whether we ex- 
amine a mineral, plant or animal. This spirit 
of helpfulness has personified in the God who 
is ever loving his children, the beneficent Prov- 
idence assisting all things to reach a higher 
state. 

Instead of brotherhood, the practice of 
selfishness mainly rules, and we need not won- 
der therefore that the penalty and suffering is 
so widely experienced in all quarters of the 
globe. Famines, earthquakes, wars and rumors 



188 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

of wars, murders, suicides, shipwrecks, and gen- 
eral unrest and anxiety are but some of the 
methods employed by nature to bring about a 
readjustment of the breaches of the law of 
brotherhood. 

Only by working for the good of all and not 
for ourselves alone, can we secure the best 
results even for ourselves; for only thus do we 
work in harmony with the One Life of which we 
are a part. 

The crying need of the world is that all 
should recognize that they are indissolubly 
linked together, and that, none can help or in- 
jure another without doing as much for himself. 
There should be a determined movement to act 
in accordance with Brotherhood, and weld it 
into our institutions, social, national and 
political; not merely as a theory, but applying 
it as a practical remedy for suffering. 

The Song of Life is heard by those who can 
attune themselves to the harmony of the One 
Life, which may be awakened in every heart. 

There is a movement on foot to start a Uni- 
versal Brotherhood. All true Souls who desire 
to live up to the rules which will govern this 
Brotherhood, and are truly desirous to lend 
their assistance in the uplifting of Humanity 



TRUE SPIRITUALISM 189 

by Thought, Word and Deed are Welcome. 
There will be no charge of dues or any money 
obligations. This Brotherhood shall be as free 
as possible from " Commercialism. ' ' 

All those truly interested and willing to work 
for an Universal Brotherhood and willing to 
subscribe to these articles, should address 

BR. R. SWINBURNE CLYMER, 

Allentown, Pa. 

The Universal Brotherhood of Man draws 
no lines of demarkation ; it separates itself from 
no good thing. It stands for the impartial in- 
vestigation of thought, and all human experi- 
ences and the acceptance of all the truth which 
can thus be discovered. 

No matter if you are not a Mystic or a stu- 
dent of the Occult, you can become one of us if 
you are but willing to live up to the rules laid 
down and if you can subscribe to the foregoing 
Prospectus. No matter to what church you 
belong or to what creed you subscribe, if you 
are willing to obey the rules and give others the 
same free will of belief you can become one of 
us. Remember that this is not a money-making 
affair. There are no fees, no dues, all that is 
asked of you is that "You do unto others as 
you would that they should do unto you. * ' Not 



190 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 

only in one thing, but in all things. This is 
Universal Brotherhood. 

You are at perfect liberty to do as you 
please so long as you treat others as God, the 
Father, would have you treat them. 

The Brotherhood stands for the overcoming 
of Evil— the negative of good— not by antago- 
nism, but with good, the good that is irresistible, 
because of its courage and verity. We demand 
that you condemn nothing and no one but that 
you give the helping hand instead and help your 
fallen brother or sister to stand up and face the 
world. 

If you wish to study and become a teacher, 
we can place you under the care of such who 
know how to teach you the Truth and Higher 
Science. We ask that you get as many inter- 
ested as you can and do not forget that all, no 
matter what their belief, can join us if they join 
as Brothers and Sisters of one great family, 
recognizing the Fatherhood of God over all. 

NOTE:— Complete rules and all teachings 
of the Brotherhood are contained in the book 
" Militia Crucifera Evangelica." This book is 
bound in cloth and stamped in gold, contains 
200 pages, obligation, etc. Price, $2.00. Those 
that order before June, 1907, $1.00. 



The Thompsonian System of 
Medicine 

By R. SWINBURNE CLYMER, Ph.D., M.D. 

Honorary Fellow of the ThompsoDian Physio- Medical College 
of England, Diplomate in Osteopathy of The English 
School of Osteopathy, and Member of Physio-Medical 
Board of Great Britian and Ireland. 

This book is just what it claims to be, a complete 
system of Medicine. No poisons enter into the 
Physio-Medical system of Medicine. It is such a 
system that even the layman can understand,. 
This book is from the teachings of Dr. Samuel 
Thompson, the founder of the Botanical System of 
medication. 

This work has been prepared especially for the 
beginner in medicine and also for the father of 
every family. It is so plain that he who reads can 
understand. If the teachings are followed, and 
they are so plain that everyone can understand 
them, it will seldom be found necessary to call in a 
physician. 

When one considers the awful amount of harm 
done by the present system of practice, it will be 
seen why such a book is become a necessity. No 
one can afford to be without a copy of the work. 

Published by the English school, and the first 
1000 copies will be sold at $1.00 per copy. Bound 
only in cloth. 

Address all orders ; 

The Philosophical Publishing Co. , 

Allentown, Pa. 



A NEW BOOK 



44 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF FIRE" 

(Love, God) 

The History of Its Teachings 

The "Fire Philosophy" is the basis of all Religious Mysteries 
and all the secret philosophies of the Universe. It, is also the underly- 
ing principles on which AllSecret Occult Brotherhoods are founded. 
It, was taught in the Ancient Mysteries and, although the knowledge 
of it has long been lost to the world, it has always been preserved in 
the Occult Fraternities. In the admirable work, "The Philosophy of 
the Living Fire" Dr. Clymer, a Mystic and Initiate, has set, forth the 
histoy of this Sublime Philosophy of the Ancient "Fire Philosophers," 
whose teachings are embodied in the Occult Brotherhood now known 
as the Philosophers of the Living Fire of the Western World. 

In this admirable work he has given us glimpses of nearly every 
Mystic Order, of both Ancient and Mediaeval times, tracing the teach- 
ing from their first inception on the lost, " Atlantis" up to the present 
time. Some of the subjects touched upon are the Ancient Mysteries, 
Secret Doctrines, Regeneration, the finding of the Cnrist, the Templars 
andRosicruciansas" Fire Philosophers," the Therapeutae and Essenes 
and their Initiation, the lost " Atlantis" and how and why it disap- 
peared from off the face of the earth, and many other subjects of pro- 
found interest to the true Occult scholar. 

Says a woman who is known by practically every New Thought or Occult Stud- 
ent in the country: 

" It is a book that every true woman in the land should have, for 
where is there a woman to whom the word 'Love' does not appeal? 
I believe that if our women knew what the book contains there would 
not be one who would be without it for an hour. It contains the secret 
of Life and Immortality and is the basis of a true Religion and the 
Universal Brotherhood ot Man. 

"Truly, all men should have the book but it appeals especially to 
the nobler nature of woman for her very existence is dependent on 
Love. Success to you in your work." 

There are hundreds of testimonials here and the above few are 
only picked from private correspondence. 

The book is ready, contains 200 pages and is bound in cloth, 
stamped in gold. Price of the first edition is only $1.50, and these are 
nearly gone. Copies can be h id in genuine leather at $5.00. Order now. 

Address all letters and make all Money payable ONLY to 

The Philosophical Publishing, Co. 

ALLENTOWN, PA. 



Ihe ROSICRUCIANS 

and their TEACHINGS 



By REV. DR. R. SWINBURNE CLYMER. 



This is just what the title implies It is not 
only a complete History of that mighty Fraternity ,, 
but it gives all the Manifestoes as issued by the 
Fraternity and gives them in the natural order as 
they were issued. Not only this but it gives many 
of their teachings which could not be otherwise 
had as only single copies are in existence. 

No student of Mysticism, no matter how poor, 
can afford to be without a copy of this book. It 
appeals to Masons as it contains things not gener- 
ally known. At the same time, those who are not 
now Masons but who may some time wish to be, 
should have the book. It appeals to women espec- 
ially as it contains a message for them. 

It is a book of 300 pages, printed on the best 
of paper and bound in cloth with Title and side 
symbol in gold, price $3.00 to those who Order at 
once. In leather with Title and side symbol in 
gold at $4.00. 

Order from 

The Philosophical Publishing Co., 

ALLENTOWN, PA. 

Tnis book contains no ndvoitining. matter. 



VACCINATION 

BROUGHT HOME TO YOU — by Dr. R. S. Cly mer. 

Are you interested in the the well being of yourself or your 
family? If you are you want to know the facts about this 
important question, — vaccination. 

"Vaccination Brought Home to you" contains just the 
facte that you need. It is not a great long treatise on the 
theories and philosophies of "Scientific", vaccination, but is a 
clear setting forth of plain common-sense facts, so that he 
that readeth may understand. 

.. It tells what vaccine is and how it is procured from the 
calf; tells how some have been killed and others made to 
suffer untold miseries by being inoculated with pure vaccine 
[poison]; gives facts and figures showing the results of vacci- 
nation in Italy, Japan, The Franco-German War, the Philipr 
pines and the U. S. All of which show that vaccination don't 
prevent small-pox, but rather tends to increase it. It exposes 
some of the lies of the wily Medicoes. These and many other 
interesting facts all in a nice little booklet of about a hundred 
pages. i! ..:.. . , -- v . . 

Illustrations; showing specimen cases of "successful" vac- 
cination, and the processes of securing 'vaccine Virus. A 
photo of Hon. L. H. Piehn; Pres. of AV. S;lof A.; also his 
daughter, Alma Olivia Piehn, a, .victim of "successful .vacci- 
nation." 

This book is not published as a money making scheme 
but for the enlightenment of the people. ,: '"* 

. • Send for a copy .today. It may be> the means of saying, 
your life or that of a dear friend. Sepd for several .copies and 
sell or distribute them among your friends, thus helping along 
the good work. ' " • "* ' ' 

Bound in cloth; single copy .'; .>.,'. 50 cents. 

Bound in papery ( sijpgle, .copy*. : ......... 4 . ..... .25 cents. 

Write for special rates oh quantities and send orders to 

>.:% TtoPHiLi^OMlGAL PUBLISHING CO.. 












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